Remember the Sexual Harassment case brought against the New York Knicks, Madison Square Garden and Isiah Thomas? The one that featured the chairman of MSG firing the claimant before a proper investigation had been conducted, the coach of the Knicks pontificating that race plays a role in whether derogatory references to women are OK or not, and the point guard for the Knicks hooking up with an company intern outside of a "gentleman's club"?
Right - that one...
Dad has stepped in and asked that the nonsense come to an end. In this case, "Dad" is David Stern and
the NBA. From the New York Times:
"Three days before a federal judge was to hear testimony on Anucha Browne Sanders’s claim for compensatory damages against Madison Square Garden, the parties settled the sexual harassment case yesterday and ended all appeals.
In the settlement, the Garden agreed to pay her $11.5 million, including $4 million in legal fees, said a person with knowledge of the confidential agreement. That is $100,000 less than the punitive damages a jury awarded Browne Sanders in October. Before the settlement, she had been seeking an additional $9.6 million in compensatory damages.
The Garden had staunchly refused to settle with Browne Sanders before the trial began in September in United States District Court in Lower Manhattan. The Garden instead opted to weather three weeks of frequently sordid testimony, none more so than that of Stephon Marbury’s sexual tryst in his truck with a team intern.
But in a statement, the Garden said that “at the strong request” of N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern “and in the interest of focusing on basketball, we can all agree that it is time for us to move on and put this issue behind us.”
Despite agreeing to settle with Browne Sanders, the Garden and Thomas remained defiant about the jury’s verdict against them.
“The outcome was a travesty of justice,” the Garden said in a statement."
It's interesting that the settlement terms would allow the Garden to continue to be defiant about the facts, as most of us are used to seeing more neutral language in settlement announcements, along the lines of "we're looking forward to moving forward with the future..."
Of course, if any of you are longtime NBA fans, you know that Isiah has always been in the middle of one scrum or another. I'm a life-long Pistons (like Dumars, Budah and Salley, but never warmed to Isiah) fan, so I offer up this montage (I've been waiting to use that word) of a time in Isiah's life when conflict was kinder and simpler...
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