Though I’ve never been asked who I’d like to dine with if I could choose from any 3 individuals living or dead, I’ve no trouble selecting the trio off the top of my head ; “Iron” Mike Doskocil, the late Laura Carter and former Knicks PF / Charles Oakley.   Slam’s Nick Rattner interrogated Oak recently on a number of topics including, but not limited to, Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame acceptance speech, cooking, and Tim Donaghy.  Though you should check out the entire interview, here’s a few highlights :

SLAM: Would you be disappointed if Michael Jordan hadn’t spoken his mind in Springfield?
CO: At first he said he wasn’t gonna say nothing. I knew he was going to say something. A lot of us [were] in the hotel, just talking about basketball, about life, the NBA, and this moment¦ For me it’s a statement that you did something nobody else could accomplish along the way. Somebody might have got 10,000 rebounds but you might have got 8,000 offensive, that’s something special¦ And look, I told somebody on Facebook, they keep asking when the Knicks are going to retire my jersey. They probably will never retire my jersey. The only way they’ll retire my jersey is if I marry Dolan’s daughter, and I never see that happening in life. People ask me that, but I don’t know.

SLAM: [Jordan] knows that he got special treatment, right?
CO: You know, some people say I’m going to get a manicure-pedicure¦ No, they came to his house. I’m going to get an oil change. Jiffy Lube, they brought a truck to his house. He said he’s gonna get his haircut, the barber comes over¦ Looking back you might say the man might have deserved it. But while I’m playing, no¦ While we’re playing he’s trying to kill me. That™’s how it is. He’s trying to cross me over with a jump shot, I’m trying to hit him in the paint¦

SLAM: You play cards? Poker?
CO: I love poker. They tried to get me in a couple poker shows. I had an idea when I was in Washington in ˜00-01, or 2002 I think. Whenever we was in Washington that last year with the Wizards. I told MJ and some friends that we should do a poker show.

It would concern six guys, doing their regular, everyday work. We meet up, I cook the meal. We talk and mess. Eat dinner. Then we all put masks on and play poker.

SLAM: Masks?
CO: Yeah, but we’ll be talking mess while we’re playing. Get chips, buy in. You know, tape it. It was just something fun. So people wouldn’t know who was playing. They’d probably figure it out. It was just something different.