James Dolan Has Few Backers in New York

Walter O’Malley, responsible for separating Brooklyn from its beloved Dodgers, has reigned as the undisputed uber-villain of the city’s sporting life for nearly a half-century.

Will James Dolan finally get him off the hook?

The billionaire entrepreneur, whose cable company owns Madison Square Garden, the NBA’s Knicks and the NHL’s Rangers, was recently designated “the most hated man in New York” by one tabloid headline. He’s regularly lambasted by critics, columnists and callers to local sports radio.

“His leadership is so putrid,” wrote Newsday columnist Jon Heymann in a typically brutal broadside, “it smacks of sabotage.”

O’Malley broke the hearts of a single borough with his 1957 move to Los Angeles. The anti-Dolan contingent extends from the city into the suburbs, from the mayor’s City Hall office to Madison Square Garden’s courtside seats to the 2.4 million homes blacked out of New York Mets games earlier this year by a cable dispute.

To them, the Cablevision Systems Corp. chief executive is New York’s MVP -- most vilified person. “Not since the darkest days of George Steinbrenner,” Bob Raismann of the Daily News wrote late last year, “has New York had such a sports villain.”

Not that the attacks ruffle Dolan, who’s generally content to suffer the most vicious barbs in silence; he turned down an interview request for this story. The father of five feels no need to trumpet his business success, or his post-9/11 fundraising efforts, or his longtime devotion to the home teams.

Others may offer a defense, including fellow NBA owner Mark Cuban and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. But they are clearly outnumbered.

In the last few years, the 49-year-old goateed Garden boss managed to alienate backers of a half-dozen local franchises in a variety of ways:

* In 2002-03, a war with the YES Network over access to the Cablevision system left millions of New York Yankees and New Jersey Nets fans blacked out. Fans of the New York Mets suffered similarly this season in a Cablevision-Time Warner fight, leading to a semi-regular “Mike Piazza Held Hostage” feature in one local paper.

* The Rangers haven’t made the playoffs in seven seasons, a string broken only by the ongoing NHL lockout. (Cablevision took over control of the Garden and its tenants in 1997.)

* Their neighbors, the Knicks, are coming off a fourth straight losing season despite a $90 million payroll -- the NBA’s second highest. Dolan also dumped announcer Marv Albert, the voice of the team since its Reed-Bradley-Frazier championship era.

* New York Jets fans envisioning a $2 billion new home in Manhattan watched Dolan pour millions of dollars into anti-stadium ads. He also refused to air pro-stadium ads on his cable network, prompting a lawsuit by the Jets.

Dolan’s efforts may be working. Last Tuesday, a crucial vote on the stadium was postponed after a pair of powerful state legislators decided they needed more information about the proposal.

It’s the last battle, the West Side stadium war, that turned Dolan and Mayor Michael Bloomberg into the city’s most bitter combatants since Ali-Frazier I sold out the Garden 34 years ago.

Dolan doesn’t want the new facility to compete against the Garden; Bloomberg sees the stadium as the anchor for the city’s 2012 Olympic bid and development of the neighborhood. The dispute quickly became public and personal.

“This company says, ‘To hell with America. We don’t care,’ ” an angry Bloomberg said in February, questioning Dolan’s patriotism. Later, he criticized Dolan’s management of the Knicks. In a rare interview with New York magazine, Dolan accused the mayor of threatening to yank the Garden’s tax abatements if Cablevision opposed the stadium plan.

Dolan, the son of cable industry pioneer Charles Dolan, doesn’t back down from a feud. But he rarely goes public about his battles, leaving that task to his public relations people.

Dolan stays busy with other things. Cablevision now collects more money from its subscribers than any other major cable operator in America. And he earned major kudos after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by helping organize the “Concert for New York City” benefit held at the Garden.

Knicks general manager Isiah Thomas called Dolan one of his three most admired sports figures, along with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and a former New York public enemy No. 1, Steinbrenner.

And Dallas Mavericks owner Cuban, one of the league’s most uninhibited figures, said Dolan receives a bad rap. He mentioned the Knicks’ 1999 trip to the NBA finals, a forgotten foray amid the recent failures.

“I think Jim is one of the better owners in the NBA,” Cuban said in an e-mail. “He is committed to doing what it takes to bring a winner to New York, and to make the NBA a stronger company.”