In Escalating Feud Over Knicks Watch Party, Sliwa Agrees With Mamdani To Reexamine Dolan’s Property Taxes on Madison Square Garden

It’s not just the New York Knicks championship run that’s unified the city. The city’s collective disdain for Knicks owner Jim Dolan is even uniting former mayoral adversaries: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his 2025 Republican mayoral competition, Curtis Sliwa. Mr. Sliwa is now suggesting that the Democratic Socialist mayor should “tax the rich guy.” In a video posted on social media Thursday, Mr. Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels and a radio host on 710 WOR Radio, chimed in on a bitter feud between Messrs. Mamdani and Dolan, the latter of whom he said should have his favorable property tax exemption removed from Madison Square Garden. “Jimmy Dolan, I’m coming after you now for sure. I’ll have the mayor on my side to make you pay your property taxes,” worth $43 million a year, Mr. Sliwa said in his video, which he punctuated with an emphatic finger-wag to the camera. Mr. Sliwa was weighing in on the ongoing feud between Mr. Dolan and Mr. Mamdani over a scaled-down Knicks NBA Finals Game 4 watch party outside MSG, which is owned by Mr. Dolan’s holding group, Madison Square Garden Entertainment. Mr. Mamdani said the city approved a watch party for 1,000 ticketed attendees, albeit with a stricter security plan in place that included a seven-block perimeter. The measures were similar to the “frozen zone” the NYPD and City Hall put in place for Game 3, of which President Donald Trump attended at the invitation of Mr. Dolan. In doing so, the raucous watch parties that have become the symbol of Knicks fandom this postseason were now pushed further away from MSG. In a series of combative statements, Madison Square Garden Sports Corp. deflected blame for the new security restrictions, accusing Mr. Mamdani and New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch of maintaining stricter security zones to “turn the streets around MSG into a police state.”Ultimately, Mr. Dolan declined the mayor’s permit, saying in a statement, “We did not think it was fair to just allow a small group to celebrate outside the Garden when everybody else was being shut out.”During an in-studio interview with WFAN Radio on Wednesday, Mr. Dolan said Ms. Tisch and Mr. Mamdani were “not Knicks fans” who don’t “have faith in their own police force.”“They have never managed anything like this before, and it’s like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches coming out the sides,” Mr. Dolan added. After the interview, Mr. Mamdani countered on X, saying his office approved Mr. Dolan’s request for a permit for a watch party of up to 999 fans and that the Knicks owner’s decision to cancel the party was “breaking hearts across our city.”A spokesman for Mr. Mamdani said on X that Mr. Dolan “seems hell-bent on making sure the city has rancid vibes for the finals run.”On Thursday, Mr. Mamdani appeared on the Hot 97 Mornings with Mero radio show, saying he worked with the NBA and LinkNYC to stream the game on dozens of screens across New York. “When James Dolan decided to cancel the watch party that he requested, we wanted to make sure that we brought that watch party to New Yorkers,” Mr. Mamdani said during the interview.Indeed, Mr. Dolan’s feud with the city, just as the Knicks are one win away from the championship, is sabotaging his one chance at earning goodwill with a fanbase that had little love lost for him in the first place. “Before the Knicks’ championship run against the San Antonio Spurs, the most hated, loathed person in New York was Jimmy Dolan,” Mr. Sliwa said on social media. In 1999, years after Cablevision founder Charles Dolan, Mr. Dolan’s father, purchased majority control of Madison Square Garden, Mr. Dolan was put in charge of day-to-day operations. That launched a chaotic, dysfunctional 27-year run that resulted in few postseason appearances and plenty of expensive franchise embarrassments: the Anucha Browne Sanders sex harassment settlement, the 5-year, $50 million contract for head coach Larry Brown, who just lasted a year, and Phil Jackson’s failed run as team president that resulted in zero postseason appearances. Then there were his many feuds with fans and a popular former player, Charles Oakley, whom he banned from MSG after a confrontation between the two. Mr. Dolan, himself a recovering alcoholic, accused Mr. Oakley of having a drinking problem. Recently, an investigation by WIRED magazine revealed Mr. Dolan was using facial recognition technology as part of his surveillance network for his venues — including Radio City Music Hall — to track, identify, and ban attendees, including attorneys with involvement in lawsuits against him. A former communications director for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Bill Cunningham, told the New York Times that Mr. Dolan “can’t help himself.” The timing of Mr. Dolan’s latest fight against the city is not doing him any favors. In 2013, the City Council rejected Madison Square Garden’s bid to operate in perpetuity at its existing Penn Station. Mr. Dolan’s arena has since been operating with a series of short-term permits, most recently a five-year permit that will soon be up for renewal. The City Council would prefer MSG move out of Penn Station. In 1982, Gulf and Western Industries, the owners of Madison Square Garden at the time, received a full property tax exemption that, unbeknownst to then-Mayor Koch, was in perpetuity, not for ten years as he initially believed. A 2023 NYC Independent Budget Office study found that MSG had avoided paying more than $946.7 million in property taxes since the exemption was first put in place. Now, Mr. Sliwa, who once accused Mr. Mamdani of supporting “terrorists” who “have always flown the flag of global jihad,” is calling on the mayor to get Mr. Dolan to start paying $43 million in property taxes. “I think, finally, the mayor may say, ‘yeah, let’s tax that rich guy who blasphemed me,” Mr. Sliwa added.

In Escalating Feud Over Knicks Watch Party, Sliwa Agrees With Mamdani To Reexamine Dolan’s Property Taxes on Madison Square Garden

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