Celtics Pick Up Knicks Trash

The Celtics have signed the loathesome Stephon Marbury. Hide the interns and up the insurance policies. This will not end well.

Boston Globe: Marbury signs with Celtics, likely to play

New Court Filings in Anucha Browne Sanders Case

MSNBC illustrated their story with this picture.
Anucha Browne Sander's lawyers filed her response to the defendant's motion to dismiss her case (routine in civil cases) and those papers were unsealed by the court yesterday. This case remains a doozy. Browne Sanders attorneys say Isiah Thomas told a cheerleader to go to the referees' lockerroom and "make them happy"; that guard Stephon Marbury had sex with a Garden employee, who said she felt she could not say no because of who he was; and that Stephon Marbury called Browne Sanders a "black bitch". He admits calling her a bitch.

I think it's interesting how Browne Sanders attorneys' portray Isiah Thomas telling the cheerleader to go to the refs lockerroom and "make them happy". The cheerleader interpreted the statement as "go in there and flirt with them." I think you could just as easily presume that he meant, go in there and have sex with them. I wonder if they will argue it that way, or stick with the cheerleader's interpretation.

MSG is going to call Browne Sanders a liar because she filed false tax returns. When MSG asked for her tax returns in discovery, her lawyers must have discovered her two major falsehoods. One, she wrote off expenses on a consulting business. Either the consulting business did not exist, or it was prohibited by her MSG contract and would have voided the contract. Whichever it was, her lawyers filed corrected tax returns retracting the deductions and paying the taxes. They also corrected her claim of charitable deductions that she hadn't made. Essentially, she cheated on her taxes.

I ran into this problem a lot in civil cases. People don't realize that when you file a lawsuit, you open up your life to examination. And nobody like paying their hard-earned money to the government. My clients tended to be more working class, so the big problem I ran into was clients who had worked under the table. I would say to them, if you want the court system to enforce the law, you have to expect to comply with the law in all respects. People of means don't work under the table, but they have their own way of cheating the government. And open themselves up to the accusation of being liars, because essentially they lied to the government on their tax returns.

Politicians do this too. The richest man running for President right now is the Mittwit, Mitt Romney. In the three years before he decided to run for Massachusetts governor, he took a homestead exemption on his taxes for his home in Utah. It saved him $148,800 on his taxes. A multi-millionaire lied on his taxes to save $54,600 a year. He blamed it on his tax preparer, too, and the voters of Massachusetts forgave him. We'll see whether this really hurts Browne Sanders at trial.

WNBC.com (AP): Former Exec.: Isiah Thomas Urged Cheerleader To Flirt With Refs

NYDailyNews: Garden of sin in suit
Fired executive's filing tells of sleazy doings by Isiah and Marbury

The sordid allegations include:

* Thomas allegedly urged Knicks cheerleader Petra Pope to cozy up to the refs before a game against the Nets in 2004.

"What she told me was that Isiah asked her to go into the referees' locker room and make them happy," Browne Sanders testified. "I asked her to tell me what that meant and she said, 'Well, he wanted me to flirt with the referees.'"

She said Pope told her she reluctantly did as she was asked.

* In November 2005 a member of Browne Sanders' staff told her and another female Garden executive that she had sex with Marbury in a car after a boozed-filled night at a "gentleman's club."

The woman said Marbury textmessaged her a few day later saying, "I want some more of that," according to court documents.

The woman told her bosses the sex was consensual. But she also said "she did not believe she could say no because of who Marbury is," according to the court documents.

* Browne Sanders claims Marbury called her a "black b----" after she complained that the star guard's cousin - who also was employed by the Knicks - had been making graphic sexual comments to her staff.

But Knicks brass said in a statement that the suit filed by the team's former senior vice president for marketing and business operations was "riddled with fabrications."

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At one point the Garden was ready to make the case go away with cash, according to court papers. But when Browne Sanders' lawyers asked for $6million in 2005, Garden Chairman Jim Dolan called it "ridiculous" and nixed the payout, the papers said.

Earlier that year, Browne Sanders was given a $75,000 raise and her annual salary jumped to $250,000. She said she was told she was doing a terrific job and, with the Garden's backing, was named to the Sports Business Journal's list of top professionals.

The Post's article lays out MSG's defense:

NYPost: FOUL ON STEPHON
KNICK STAR SLAPPED IN MSG SEX SUIT

In a statement, an MSG spokesman said, "This lawsuit, just like Anucha's four years of phony tax returns, is riddled with fabrications from a fired and disgruntled former employee who was let go for poor performance and manipulating subordinates for personal gain."

"The public should know and the jury will learn that Anucha will make up stories and twist facts to pursue her real goal: money," the spokesman said.

A lawyer for Sanders called MSG's statement "a desperate attempt to mislead the public."

The documents released yesterday also show that Sanders, whose salary reached $300,000, had cashed in on nearly $80,000 in bogus tax deductions while she was on the team.

She scurried to cover her tracks last year by filing new tax returns for 2003 and 2004 - but only after a federal judge in her sex-harassment suit ordered her to share copies with MSG.

In her original tax forms, Sanders claimed she ran a "direct marketing" business out of her home from 2001 to 2004 - an unauthorized moonlighting gig that would have violated her contract with the Knicks.

Sanders wrote off nearly $20,000 in annual travel, meals and other expenses for a business she now claims she never operated - blaming her former tax preparer for the alleged fraud, which also involved padding her contributions to charity by tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Sanders has accused the married coach Isiah Thomas of repeatedly propositioning her for sex, then calling her a "bitch" and "ho" when she rejected his advances.

Anucha Browne Sanders Trial Date Set

Or, as the New York Post puts it: SEPT. 10 TRIAL DATE FOR ISIAH

And let the leaking (from the defense, surely) begin:

Legal sources predict the trial to last two weeks, allowing Thomas to be ready for Knicks' training camp Oct. 1 in Charleston, S.C. Sources deny settlement talks took place recently.

"There's going to be a trial," one legal source said. Browne-Sanders declined comment.

Interestingly, Isiah has dumped his initial attorney and replaced him with a her, the former head of the New York Women's Bar Association. Given Thomas's personnel choices at New York and Indiana, I think this may be a disaster in the making. Like the Stephon Marbury deal.

East Valley Tribune (Phoenix): Inside the NBA: New act in Knicks circus: Thomas trial slated for fall

Barely relevant P.S.: 13 years ago today, Isiah Thomas retired from the NBA.

Bad Dream Team

I haven't seen this covered in the mainstream press, but did anyone else catch the US men's Olympic team's visit to watch the US women's Olympic team's game against South Korea?

The men showed up late in the third quarter & suddenly they were the focus of MSCNBCBCNMBNC's coverage. Craig Sager did a 10 minute interview with coach Larry Brown, so that the audio completely ignored the game being shown. The camera slowly panned over the US men. There was Alan Iverson, staring vacantly into space and nodding to the music from his headphones. Ditto for LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, & Shawn Marion. (A second shot of Shawn Marion in his headphones showed him applauding a US basket, so he at least wasn't completely tuned out.) Only Emeka Okafor seemed to be paying attention to the game, standing & taking photos of his former schoolmates Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird & Swin Cash. Tim Duncan, headphones. Stephon Marbury, headphones.

The visual message from the US men was clear: they had been ordered to come to the game & they resented it. They had nothing to learn from the women. It was obvious even to the announcers. Mike Breen noted that they didn't seem to be watching the game. Craig Sager asked Brown a question about their seeming disinterest.

NBC goes to commercial, comes back & pans over the US men again. Lo & behold, all the headphones are gone! Every player has apparently during this timeout decided to take off his headphones!

You bet the word went down, whether from USA basketball or from the coaching staff, YOU FOOLS, you are embarrassing us & you are embarrassing yourselves.

I'd rather be represented by a competent group of college players than these spoiled, arrogant asses.

Go Lisa Leslie & the classy US women's team.