Lawsuit Loss Leaves Knicks at Lowpoint

On court, the New York Knickerbockers, known as the Knicks, have had trouble in recent years living up to their reputation as one of the great American basketball teams. But that is nothing compared with the tatters their reputation is now in off the court.

This week, the team suffered its greatest non-sporting humiliation since it was founded in a New York hotel in 1946, when Madison Square Garden (MSG), the Knicks' parent company, was ordered to pay $11.6m (£5.7m) in damages to a female senior executive.

Anucha Browne Sanders, the team's head of marketing, brought the case claiming she had been sexually harassed within a hostile working environment that went right to the top.

The headline figure of punitive damages against MSG, including $3m against the company's chief executive, James Dolan, was painful enough. Far more excruciating were the details that emerged over three weeks of explicit testimony in court, every jot and tittle of which was reported by the New York papers.

During the course of the trial, Ms Browne Sanders gave evidence that the team coach, Isiah Thomas, had called her a "bitch" and a "ho", and on one occasion refused to sign letters to season ticket holders that she handed to him with the refrain: "Bitch, I don't give a fuck about these white people."

When these verbal attacks failed to sway her, Ms Browne Sanders alleged, Mr Thomas tried to woo her instead, professing his love to her and making sexual advances.

A month after she formally complained to MSG about the state of affairs, Ms Browne Sanders was fired after the firm claimed she had interfered in its internal investigation.

Mr Thomas, himself a basketball legend as a former player with the Detroit Pistons, told the court that he had used foul language around Ms Browne Sanders, but never at her. He said his mother had brought him up from a young age to treat women right: "This is what you do, and this is what you don't do. This is how you treat women. I'm proud of the way she raised me."

But his famous charm, that has earned him the nickname "the smiling assassin", failed to persuade the jury of four women and three men.

Lurid details also came out in the course of the trial about the way interns were called on for casual sex. One star Knicks player, Stephon Marbury, invited a 22-year-old intern to have sex with him inside his 4x4, parked at the time outside a strip club several club members had been attending, with the memorable chat-up line: "Are you going to get in the truck?"

Ms Browne Sanders told the jury that the intern, Kathleen Decker, had been distraught afterwards and said she felt she had to have sex with the player because of "who he was".

Ms Decker, giving evidence, said the meeting was consensual. Three weeks before the start of the trial, she was promoted to a senior position in MSG.

The punitive verdict comes at a difficult time for the Knicks, who this week began training for the new season which opens next month. Mr Dolan, the chairman of MSG's parent company, Cable vision, the fifth largest provider of cable television in the US, will have no problem paying the damages, though the case will add to the low esteem in which he is held by many fans.

The Knicks have failed to win any silverware since he was handed control of the club by his father, Charles, in 2001, and he has been voted in a poll of players by Sports Illustrated the worst owner in the world of professional basketball.

MSG says it intends to appeal against the court verdict.