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https://twitter.com/IanBegley/status/595663819424268288

gunsnewing wrote:HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHQHAHQHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHhahHahahahahahahahahaha

you choking?

fishmike wrote:http://nypost.com/2015/05/05/isiahs-back-msgs-biggest-villain-hired-as-liberty-president/

Good luck Zeke

Good one fish

Gunsew, says it best Zeke has a hold $$ on JDolan

they are trying to get the old crew back together...

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NYKBocker wrote:

gunsnewing wrote:HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHQHAHQHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHhahHahahahahahahahahaha

you choking?

Yup almost chroked

GustavBahler wrote:If this is an attempt to rehabilitate Isiah's image enough to hand him the keys to the Knicks again, (after Phil leaves)then I'm done as a fan.

The man who ignored the evidence of sexual harassment and was Isiah's biggest enabler after Dolan, Steve Mills is brought back as GM (because no one else in the league would hire him) and the man who was found guilty of sexual harassment is also brought back and given part ownership of one of Dolan's properties. Hell, even Riley couldn't get that, and he didn't run the franchise into the ground in every sense of the word. What a sick F'er.

Isiah Thomas Is Named President of W.N.B.A.’s Liberty
By HARVEY ARATONMAY 5, 2015

The strange Madison Square Garden world of James L. Dolan and his complicated relationship with Isiah Thomas became a whole lot stranger with the announcement on Tuesday that Thomas had been hired to run the W.N.B.A.’s Liberty franchise as team president, and with an ownership stake.

Without public knowledge, Thomas had been serving as an adviser to the Liberty in recent months, and he said in a telephone interview that he had been instrumental in the January reinstatement of Coach Bill Laimbeer, his former teammate with the Detroit Pistons, whose contract was not renewed after last season.

Thomas added that he also was involved in the hiring of the longtime Knicks assistant coach Herb Williams in a similar role and Teresa Weatherspoon, who starred on the early Liberty teams of the late 1990s, as director of player development.

“Jim reached out to me about three or four months ago,” Thomas said. “He said he thought the team could use some help and if I wanted to get involved. I said I did. We just kept talking and it led to this.”

Thomas, whose basketball role has recently been limited to part-time work for NBA TV, said he would continue as an analyst but, he added, “Now I got basketball again 365 and 24/7, the way I like it.”

He said he has been a fan of the women’s game, and believes its appeal is being enhanced as “even the men’s game played below the rim has become more popular after a generation where everyone wanted to dunk, like Michael Jordan. Now you have Stephen Curry as the M.V.P., you have fans valuing shooting, screening, cutting, passing — and that’s been the appeal of the women’s game.”

The return of Thomas to an executive position at the Garden comes seven and a half years after a federal jury in Manhattan awarded a former female team executive $11.6 million in damages following charges that she was wrongfully fired for complaining about being sexually harassed by Thomas during his time as president and coach of the Knicks.

Not long after the trial, a Garden executive who was in the organization when the charges were brought said that Dolan, the Garden’s executive chairman, could have reached a settlement for a few hundred thousand dollars. Dolan was stubbornly defiant in his insistence that no wrongdoing was done then, and that apparently has not changed.

“We did not believe the allegations then, and we don’t believe them now,” said Barry Watkins, the Garden’s executive vice president for communications and administration. “We feel strongly that the jury improperly and unfairly held Isiah Thomas responsible for sordid allegations that were completely unrelated to him, and for which M.S.G. bore responsibility.

“In fact, when given the opportunity, the jury did not find Isiah liable for punitive damages, confirming he did not act maliciously or in bad faith. We believe Isiah belongs in basketball, and are grateful that he has committed his considerable talent to help the Liberty succeed.”

The former Knicks executive, who now uses the name Anucha Browne, is a vice president with the N.C.A.A. in Indianapolis, in charge of women’s basketball championships. Reached by text message, she said of Thomas’s return to the Garden: “I heard about this. No response is the best response for me.”

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Mary Jo Kane, a veteran sports advocate in her role as director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sports at the University of Minnesota, said that Dolan had sent a troubling message to fans of the Liberty with this appointment.

“There is a certain insensitivity and tone deafness to Liberty fans and women in general when you hire someone who has lost a nearly $12 million sexual harassment lawsuit,” Kane said.

Kane added that while Thomas “certainly had a Hall of Fame playing career, he has not succeeded that much at any particular role since,” and that may speak to a larger issue of how committed N.B.A. owners are to their women’s product.

While other W.N.B.A. teams have folded or been sold by parent N.B.A. owners, the Liberty has remained under Garden ownership since the league began play in 1997. But Kane said she wondered if having a franchise is merely a convenient way to keep an arena stay open for business during a time of year when it would normally be dark — and to keep friends employed.

“He seems to be more committed to making sure that Isiah Thomas has a job in basketball than to ensuring that the Liberty — one of the flagship W.N.B.A. teams in the same city as the league market — has a winning team,” Kane said.

Knicks fans might also take issue with Thomas in the Liberty front office, mainly due to its proximity to the Knicks’ executive suite. Dolan has already tried to return Thomas — whose tenure running and coaching the Knicks was widely panned — as a consultant in 2010, when Donnie Walsh was the team’s president.

The N.B.A. rejected the idea because Thomas at the time was coaching at Florida International University, where he compiled a 26-65 record over three seasons.

With Phil Jackson approaching his second full season as the team’s $12 million-a-year president while embarking on an overhaul of the roster, speculation of what Thomas’s presence in the building could mean if a turnaround does not soon occur will be unavoidable.

For his part, Thomas said his new position has nothing to do with the Knicks. He also would not comment on the 2007 trial and its outcome.

As often is the case, Dolan spoke only through a statement, calling Thomas “an excellent judge of talent, and I’m confident that he will put all of his energy and experience into making the Liberty a perennially competitive and successful team.”

While the Liberty has reached the W.N.B.A. finals four times — the last trip in 2002 — the team has never won a league championship.