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misterearl
Posts: 38786
Alba Posts: 0
Joined: 11/16/2004
Member: #799
USA
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(If there is any constant at MSG it is performing in the eye of the storm. Looking ahead, with the opening of training camp around the corner the younger Knicks will need to learn how to deal and the vets will need to adopt a more stoic personality. Then again, Dave Hanners did a decent job with the Summer League team. Whatever happens, 2007-08 promises to be a roller coaster of memorable dimensions. Stay tuned...)
At Thomas Trial, Knicks Are Focus of Questions
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: September 11, 2007 NYT
Isiah Thomas spent four hours yesterday at his sexual-harassment trial across a square table from his accuser, Anucha Browne Sanders, listening as a pool of potential jurors was winnowed to 14, which is to be cut today to a panel of six and two alternates.
Opening statements are to follow the selection of the jury.
Thomas, the Knicks’ coach and president of basketball operations, and Browne Sanders said nothing to each other in the jurors’ room on the 23rd floor of the Manhattan federal court, where Judge Gerard E. Lynch of the United States District Court questioned the jurors to determine their fairness to serve.The antagonists seemed to avoid eye contact despite their proximity. But barring a settlement, they will be in the same courtroom until around Sept. 27, battling over Browne Sanders’s charges that Thomas cursed at her regularly and made unwanted sexual advances toward her.
Thomas, 46, in a gray suit, looked relaxed, smiling occasionally, and at breaks in the questioning of the jurors, laughed with his three lawyers, all of them women.
He showed none of the seething anger that he displayed at a news conference in January 2006 after Browne Sanders, then a senior vice president of marketing for the Knicks, accused him in federal court of sexually harassing and verbally abusing her.
...
Robert Becker, a 28-year-old engineer from the Bronx, was rejected for his belief that a disproportionate number of basketball players get into trouble similar to Thomas’s.
He added that he was no longer a Knicks fan, prompting Thomas to rest his head on the table. “I kind of gave up on the Knicks when they signed Latrell Sprewell.” Becker said.
Lynch noted that Sprewell’s arrival pre-dated Thomas’s hiring by the Garden.
Few of the potential jurors said they had any deep knowledge about Thomas, or the case, and only a few indicated that they would have difficulty if Lynch asked them to avoid reading or watching sports-related news to avoid accounts of the case.
One juror who made the group of 14, Irene Ray, a 58-year-old part-time receptionist, said she recognized Stephon Marbury, the Knicks’ guard, who was said to have made vile comments about Browne Sanders, as the player “with the $15 sneakers.”
Marbury is expected to be a witness during the trial.
Kathleen Bogas, one of Thomas’s lawyers, questioned the objectivity of Tommy Vazquez, a 37-year-old maintenance worker and Knicks fan from the Bronx, who told Lynch that Thomas was a better talent evaluator than he was a general manager.
“He has an opinion about the team on trial in this case,” she said.
In overruling her objection, Lynch said it would be a disservice to disqualify someone who follows the Knicks closely. “The team isn’t doing that well,” he said, a circumstance that he said places the coach and general manager “on the line.”
Browne Sanders and Thomas said nothing after the session. But Sue Ellen Eisenberg, another Thomas lawyer, said in a statement: “Anucha Browne Sanders did not work for Isiah Thomas. She did not report to him. Isiah did not hire her, he did not fire her, he never said he was in love with her and he never ever sexually harassed Ms. Browne Sanders.”
once a knick always a knick
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