Posted by crzymdups:

Posted by Rich:

Let's see if the plaintiff has any tapes as existed in the Bill O'Reilly case.

or a stained dress.

Isiah is a cross dresser? That figures.

until the truth does come out, the "bitch trying to bring a brother down" stance a lot have taken is invalid as well.

and I commented on the Kenny hiring, not the Marv firing.

[Edited by - McK1 on 01-25-2006 2:39 PM]

Guys, guys, you forget that IT is a fag, if he was harassing anyhone it was Shanderson.

Posted by simrud:

Guys, guys, you forget that IT is a fag, if he was harassing anyhone it was Shanderson.

He was harrassing Shandon but Shandon resisted his advances so Isiah removed him from the team and paid him $20MM to keep his mouth shut.

this is not to say that Isiah/Mills are innocent by any means, but this sure smells of the tone that is set at the very top and is allowed to trickly downwards.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/385932p-327491c.html

Marbury kin key players in harass fight

BY MICHAEL O'KEEFFE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

When the Knicks traded for Stephon Marbury two years ago, they got more than a big-name point guard.

They also got his family - and a heap of headaches.

Two of the Coney Island star's cousins - Hassan Gonsalves and Tasheem Ward - are key players in the sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Knicks President Isiah Thomas and Madison Square Garden by former senior vice president for marketing Anucha Browne Sanders.

MSG President Steve Mills told Browne Sanders in the fall of 2004 that MSG chairman James Dolan wanted her to create jobs for Gonsalves and Ward, even though both men were "completely unqualified," the lawsuit said.

"Gonsalves was ultimately fired by MSG, at Browne Sanders' urging, because he engaged in repeated and flagrant sexual harassment," the lawsuit added. "His firing did not occur, however, until he had sexually harassed several women on the staff and had on numerous occasions defrauded the company."

Sources close to the team told the Daily News that .Gonsalves threatened Browne Sanders after he was fired, telling her, "We know you have kids. We know where you live."

Ward, the sources said, remains employed by the club and is well-liked by his co-workers.

Gonsalves also cropped up in the news several years ago. He was with Marbury in 2000 when two men, one armed with a gun, robbed the player of a flashy $150,000 diamond-studded gold necklace after the cousins left a Manhattan nightclub.

Another "unqualified" man Dolan ordered Browne Sanders to hire also created problems for the organization, according to the lawsuit. Vernon Manuel, the former Dolan landscaper who had dated the MSG chief's daughter, "forged his manager's signature on multiple occasions, stole from the company and acted in a hostile and aggressive manner with many women on the staff, including Browne Sanders" while employed by MSG. Manuel, Gonsalves and Ward did not return calls seeking comment.

Last November, Marbury - emboldened by negative comments made by Thomas - made numerous hostile, crude and sexist statements to others in the organization that Browne Sanders interpreted as threatening.

Gonsalves isn't the only Marbury cousin who has found himself in the headlines. Sebastian Telfair was considered one of the best high school players in New York City history and is now a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. Others, however, haven't fared as well.

Three of Marbury's cousins died in street gunfights. Darryl Jenkins, then 22, was killed in 1991 in an unsolved drive-by shooting; Omar Jenkins, 27, was gunned down in 1997 after he supposedly dissed two East New York gang members, and Yusef McEaddy, 22, was fatally shot in 2004 after arguing with another man.

anybody read this:

http://www.nj.com/knicks/ledger/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1138257904221650.xml&coll=1

Browne Sanders has hired Judith Vladeck. Smith says her presence discounts Madison Square Garden's claim that Sanders is attempting to extort money out of the Garden and Thomas.

"(Vladeck) is a pioneer. She's brilliant," Smith said. "She created the law. She's fearless. And she doesn't take junk cases. If I were them (the Knicks), I would be afraid."

It seems a lot of people here are assailing the plaintiff's character, some just because they don't find her attractive, well what about Isiah's character or lack thereof? I think this article does a good job helping to describe what kind of person Isiah is.

http://www.newsday.com/sports/printedition/ny-sbhow264601807jan26,0,4502588.column?coll=ny-sports-print

He’s no stranger to controversy

January 26, 2006


There's no way to know at this juncture who is telling the truth about the sexual harassment lawsuit that was filed in federal court Tuesday by a former executive at Madison Square Garden against Knicks president Isiah Thomas. But in the 22 years since I first met Thomas -- he was a star point guard for the Detroit Pistons, I was a young beat reporter who covered his teams -- an early impression that I had of him has always stuck.

Nothing Thomas did would surprise you.

That doesn't mean Thomas is guilty of the allegations that were made Tuesday by Anucha Browne Sanders, the former senior vice president at Madison Square Garden who outlined a 2½-year litany of charges against Thomas.

But it's worth noting that in the four stops Thomas has made since his playing career ended, Thomas' tenure has been conflicted and contentious, marked by a string of blowups and hard feelings, same as his Hall of Fame playing career. For Thomas, controversy has been a pattern - not just an aberration - that extends back into his career as far as you want to go.

Thomas had conflicts with Bob Knight, his college coach at Indiana. But then again, who didn't? His Bad Boys teams were hated outside Detroit for their flesh-smacking tactics. He fell into a horrible controversy after losing the violent, bitterly contested 1987 Eastern Conference finals against Larry Bird's Boston Celtics, saying, "If Bird were black, he'd be just another good guy."

A national firestorm ensued back then. I remember flying to Los Angeles, where the NBA Finals were about to start, and going to Thomas' hotel suite that day to interview him. That night, he was scheduled to appear during the national telecast of the game to defend himself -- which he did, it turns out, with the same sort of emotion and categorical denial that he evinced at his news conference yesterday where he indignantly denied Browne Sanders' charges.

In L.A., Thomas was so anxious -- even panicked -- that he bit two Rolaids off the roll without removing the foil wrapping and chewed them as he spoke to me.

Back then, NBA teams still traveled on commercial airline flights, same as the reporters. And that gave us all a lot of time to talk at the gate, on the plane, waiting at the baggage carousel, even during rides to the hotels or arenas on the team bus, which we also still shared back then. Thomas and I were both about the same age, and we had the sort of conversations that kids who are just out of college and starting their careers do. But along the way, the boy-wonder image that Thomas had when I first met him began to darken and change.

The Bird incident was the start of that. The naked ambition we used to see night after night in Thomas on the court -- the extremism that goaded him to play through broken bones, stitches, and knockdown fouls -- began to get recognized in him off the court, as well.

More incidents came and went. By the end of Chuck Daly's tenure as Thomas' coach in Detroit, Daly and Thomas were barely speaking. Because of a falling-out with Pistons owner Bill Davidson, the Pistons rescinded a front-office job offer to Thomas when his playing days were through.

Thomas' executive turns with the Toronto Raptors, and later after he bought the 55-year-old Continental Basketball Association, both ended badly.

The Knicks hired him anyway to replace the forgettable Scott Layden.

Now there's this. A lawsuit by a senior executive and married mother of three that lays out a nasty narrative of alleged mistreatment by Thomas, and some gross inaction by Garden COO Steve Mills.

If it seems outlandish, maybe it is. Or maybe any of us is capable of anything.

Thomas has always been a curious, complicated and ultimately opaque figure. He's smart, glib and acutely aware of the effect his charisma and good looks have on people. But if he sees that isn't working, he'll adjust on the fly -- talking like a Fortune 500 executive, slipping into the patois of some homeboy.

He can be both ruthlessly competitive and generous. He's highly intelligent and yet sometimes falls victim to his own ego and hubris.

He can inspire people around him, yet he exhibits the sort of Machiavellian tendencies that make the very same people come to intensely dislike him. He's insatiably ambitious. Behind the dazzling smile, he's got a mean streak a mile wide.

It is not a contradiction to say anyone can be all those things. It doesn't mean Thomas is guilty as charged. But to any woman in the sports business -- and I've been in it 24 years -- the cycle of harassment that Browne Sanders' lawsuit describes is sadly familiar.

Whether such harassment happened at Madison Square Garden is another story. But it happens, all right. All the time.