So what is it with James Dolan, anyway?

Even if you don’t follow the New York Knicks or the NBA, you have probably heard about Dolan by now. Dolan is the CEO of Cablevision Systems Corporation, which means that he is also is the executive chairman of the Madison Square Garden, and, by extension, the owner of the Knicks, the New York Rangers and the New York Liberty of the WNBA.

When it comes to the Rangers and the Liberty, Dolan, who looks like a gnome, basically steps aside and lets his executives run the show. In the case of the Rangers, the team’s 73-year-old president, Glen Sather, is a former player and coach who, after nearly a decade of false starts, has put together a team that is an annual contender for the Stanley Cup.

Three years ago, Dolan hired Phil Jackson, a former player with even more of a successful background as a player, coach and executive than Sather, to be the president of the Knicks. It seemed to make perfect sense: Jackson would amass a team capable of contending for the franchise’s first NBA championship since 1973, when he was a superb substitute.

Except it has not worked out that way. It appears the Knicks will miss the playoffs for the fourth straight season, and the fans – and alumni – have run out of patience waiting for the team to get any better. Dolan is probably out of patience, too. But it is clear that Dolan does not like the fans and alumni laying into his business plan with the Knicks.

Dolan is probably somewhere in the middle on the scale of meddlesome sports team owners, but he has shown to be astonishingly tone deaf, and virtually inept at public relations. Sometimes, he is so ham-handed at dealing with people that it is almost as if he wants to draw negative attention to himself. And so, once again, he has.

Last week, he ejected Charles Oakley, a former Knicks power forward who has been a vocal critic of Dolan, from a game at Madison Square Garden. Dolan claimed Oakley was taunting him from his nearby seat – which Oakley said he had paid for – and Dolan then banned Oakley from Knicks’ games at the Garden.

But that was not even the worst part.

The Knicks said of Oakley in a statement: “He was a great Knick and we hope he gets some help soon” – the implication being that Oakley has a drug or alcohol problem. Dolan, who almost certainly saw the statement before it was issued, was vilified by fans and media. It was as if Dolan expected Oakley to behave a certain way.

Oakley played for the Knicks from 1988 to 1998, before Dolan came along, and the message was clear: Dolan felt Oakley was embarrassing him because Oakley was too critical of the team for which Dolan is ultimately responsible. In a way, it does not matter if Oakley was right about what he was saying, but to Dolan, Oakley had stepped out of his place.

So, in Dolan’s mind, it was well worth it to have Oakley removed from the Garden by security guards. Dolan knows the Knicks stink. He knows the fans know that, too. But he did not think he could afford to have a guy like Oakley incite a revolt – a mutiny! – at the Garden, of all places. The ejection, ban and amateur psychoanalysis was all worth it.

Longtime Knicks fan Spike Lee in his Charles Oakley jersey: what does he make of it all? Photograph: Adam Hunger/USA Today Sports

The feud stayed in the news for days, which was hardly a terrible thing for Dolan. The feud just happened to fall into that soft spot of the New York sports schedule between the Super Bowl and spring training, and the Knicks were not going to earn any kind of status on the back pages of the tabloids because they are playing great basketball.

Because Dolan is white and Oakley is black, a racial undercurrent developed; the Rev Al Sharpton threatened to picket the Garden if Dolan did not lift his ban on Oakley. Compared with other stuff going on in this country right now, the Dolan-Oakley feud was not a big deal, maybe not even outside New York. But New York is big enough.

By Monday, Dolan and Oakley had been summoned to NBA offices, where the league commissioner, Adam Silver, with Michael Jordan himself participating on the phone, mediated a peace treaty between the two. Dolan lifted the ban on Oakley. But Oakley told the New York Daily News on Tuesday that he wanted a public apology from Dolan before he came back.

That put the ball right back in Dolan’s court, where he could be magnanimous and apologize or keep Oakley and the city in suspense. Dolan could save face, or he could keep the matter dragging along for a while. The Knicks – and, more importantly, James L Dolan – stay in the headlines.

Dolan’s father, Charles, started Cablevision and gave his son a ride on his coattails, but Dolan had bumbled along earlier in life, battling drugs and alcohol as he chased a career as a musician, which gave his comments on Oakley a certain snark. He rarely makes appearances in his role as an owner, awkwardly reading statements at the few news conferences he attends.

Maybe he just craves attention now and then. Or maybe the rest of his needs in his life are just so tended to that this is a way for him to stir up a little trouble, to take on a challenge, as he did when he decided to fight Anucha Browne Sanders in court over sexual harassment charges against former general manager Isaiah Thomas and MSG in 2006. Dolan lost.

It would seem as if Dolan will lose to Oakley in the court of public opinion this time, too. But what will he lose, really? He will still be a rich man with sports teams as toys. He gets attention whenever he wants; the ejection of Oakley did not have to happen. He can throw enough money at any problem to make it go away. He is just flexing the folds of his thick wallet.