Isiah Thomas denies wrongdoing in 2007 sexual harassment case
New York Liberty president Isiah Thomas denied any wrongdoing with regards to his 2007 sexual harassment case in an interview with ESPN.
“I will own up to what I did and the mistakes that I made, but I can’t own up to things that I didn’t do,” Thomas told ESPN’s Hannah Storm. “I did not call her derogatory names. Just didn’t happen.”
Thomas was sued by Anucha Browne Sanders, a Madison Square Garden executive, who alleged she was sexually harassed by Thomas when he was president and coach of the New York Knicks. The jury awarded Sanders $11.6 million, a sum paid by MSG and executive chariman James Dolan.
“I wasn’t the president of Madison Square Garden. I was the president of the New York Knicks,” Thomas says in the interview. “That being said, what went on at Madison Square Garden, if I had any responsibility in it in terms of managing my players, their behavior and actions, again, I take full responsibility for that. But Anucha Browne Sanders didn’t work for me, I didn’t fire her, we didn’t work in the same place, and Madison Square Garden has taken full responsibility for their environment and what happened there.”
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Thomas was hired by the Liberty in May of this year. Both the Liberty and Knicks are owned by Dolan’s Madison Square Garden Company.
– Rohan Nadkarni
