Charles Oakley hopes to see the Knicks return to the heights they reached in the 1990s, when he and Patrick Ewing patrolled the paint at Madison Square Garden.
But Oakley isn’t convinced the team’s current power forward, Amar’e Stoudemire, is the man to get them there.
“Amar’e’s good, he’s good in his way,” Oakley said yesterday at the launch of his clothing collection at K1X’s store in SoHo. “He’s a West Coast player trying to translate to the East Coast. And the longer he plays in the East, the more his body’s gonna get damaged, because he’s got to take a beating now.”
In a wide-ranging interview session, the always colorful Oakley, now an assistant coach with the Bobcats and still a fan favorite in New York for his hard-nosed game, made his feelings known about the Knicks.
Not surprisingly, Oakley, who established his tough-guy reputation by playing defense and grabbing rebounds, is not a fan of Mike D’Antoni’s run-and-gun system.
“I don’t think [it can be successful], but that’s his coaching style,” Oakley said. “They knew when they signed him. … When you go buy a Bentley, you know it’s not a Volkswagen. When they signed him, they knew what they were getting.
“That conversation should be dead, because it’s a West Coast offense playing in a hard-nosed city.
“You always give somebody a chance to prove themselves. I mean, this is his fourth year. He’s had a lot of time. … I think it’s just more half-court offense, and they need the big, tough guy. He don’t want to play that way, but finesse, it’s not gonna work.”
Although the signing of Stoudemire before last season was the first step in what Knicks fans hoped was the team’s return to the league’s elite, those hopes were pushed to new heights when the franchise acquired Carmelo Anthony at the trade deadline. But Oakley remains unconvinced the Knicks have what it takes to become an elite team.
“I mean, they’ve got hype,” he said. “But hype don’t win nothing.”
Oakley also didn’t mince his words about the organization in general. He has been at odds with the Knicks for some time, feeling he and close friend and former teammate Ewing have been disrespected.
“[The Knicks] don’t want nothing to do with me,” said Oakley, who played for the Knicks from 1988-98. “I don’t know why. I tried to deal with them on several occasions. I’m not gonna keep trying.
“They don’t like Patrick, either. They won’t give Patrick a job, so I know they won’t give me a job. Patrick should have a job before anyone. He’s probably the best guy since [Walt] Frazier, [Earl] Monroe … he’s the main guy on the list.”
Yet Oakley said he still would welcome the opportunity to return to the organization if one presented itself.
“My door is always open to the Knicks,” he said. “I tell them all the time. They said something about I told LeBron to go to Miami. I was like, ‘You all have to be one of the craziest organizations in the world.’
“Y’all should have tried to call me and talk to me, and maybe we could have gotten LeBron to New York. You went to Isiah [Thomas], and some of these other guys that don’t know the guy.”
Speaking of Thomas, Oakley did little to hide his feelings about the former team president.
“I don’t understand how he even got a job with management,” said Oakley, 47. “He had nothing to do with the Knicks, then he talked bad about the Knicks … If I see him, he’d better turn around and go the other way.”
tbontemps@nypost.com