In a 19-year run as a no-nonsense, all-elbows NBA forward, former Raptor Charles Oakley occasionally likened his on-court role to that of a butler in a mansion: He did the dirty work.
“I’m just happy to clean up and make sure everything’s all right,” he once said.
Now that the retired butler is the author of an excellent new NBA memoir, “The Last Enforcer,” let’s just say he’s hardly averse to scattering a career’s worth of collected grime around the league’s palatial estate. As much as Oakley’s book charts his inspiring rise from the bleak streets of hometown Cleveland to a life rubbing shoulders with basketball royalty — no less than Michael Jordan venerates Oakley as “my enforcer” in the book’s foreword while fellow Ohioan LeBron James has called Oakley a “legend” — it also checks off a highly readable hit list of enemies past and present.