Robert Silverman

In spy movies, there's this thing called a brush pass where, like, you know, someone pretends to bump into you or pretends to give you a hug or whatever and slips some information in your pocket.

Yeah.

As far as I know, that shit has never happened in real life, or at least not to me.

It finally happened in real life during the story.

You would have people that I'd reach out to, they'd be like, sorry, wrong number.

And then I'd hear back from them on a different number two seconds later.

We had an incredibly cold winter here in New York, like the coldest in decades.

And yet here I am like outside freezing my ass off with a source because the source will not meet inside for fear of being bugged.

And you think, well, wow, these people must be just paranoid.

You know, they've seen too many spy movies themselves.

Right.

Well, not exactly.

Famously, and we kind of like captured this in our story, is two Knicks legends met up one night in the garden, one of whom was Charles Oakley, who was a famous critic of Jim Dolan.

And he was told by his former teammate, Patrick Ewing, you know, one of the greatest Knicks of all time, to pipe down because there were listening devices everywhere.

So these people acted more paranoid than spies, but they had some reason to act this way.

You know, if you're looking at the finals right now, you see during the broadcast that there are all these Knicks legends there, guys like Charles Sprewell, Patrick Ewing, Alan Houston, John Starks, what have you, who you don't see there.

The one person you don't see, like it's really shocking not to see him there, is Charles Oakley, who is kind of the Knicks' brawniest player.

enforcer during the 90s, a great player.

Why is he not there?

He's not there because for years he was openly critical of Jim Dolan's management, stewardship of the team.