Report: Knicks Sole Team to Vote Against Toronto WNBA Team
The New York Knicks are reportedly being anything but "Canada nice."
Per a report from ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, the Knicks were the sole team on both the NBA and WNBA Board of Governors to vote against WNBA expansion into Toronto, Ontario, a development officially confirmed on Thursday.
Wojnarowski noted that the Knicks and the Toronto Raptors, a sibling organization of the new Toronto franchise under the ownership of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, remain engaged in a legal battle stemming from New York accusations of a former employee funneling proprietary information to Ontario management.
The Knicks filed a suit against the Raptors last summer, claiming that Ike Azotam, who formerly worked in the team's video department, " "illegally procured and disclosed proprietary information." Azotam and Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković were among the defendants listed in the suit.
"Sometimes, in a case like this, somebody takes your confidential information or they take your secret sauce or your customer list and they go across the street and they try to take business from you," Tampa-based attorney and trade secrets expert Kevin C. Paule told All Knicks last summer. "Here, I guess the employee has left for a competitor but they're not trying to take customers they're just trying to gain a competitive edge and use all the very sophisticated and detail-oriented stuff that the Knicks have compiled in their front office."
The Toronto WNBA franchise will be partly operated by Larry Tanenbaum. The Knicks franchise reportedly asked NBA commissioner Adam Silver to remove himself from any potential arbitration process, citing his personal friendship with Tanenbaum. Knicks owner James Dolan previously stepped down from his spots on NBA Board of Governor committees amidst the suit's filing.
"I think there are a few different reasons that somebody would file a lawsuit like this, the first one being that you want to, for lack of a better term, you want to shut it down," Paule further said of the Knicks' endgame. "You want to stop people from being able to use your stuff to compete against you. So I think that's the next priority here. They obviously feel that what was taken is pretty important, pretty valuable to them."
The ongoing battle in a different kind of court didn't stop the Knicks and Raptors from doing transactional business in late December, as the Knicks acquired a package headlined by OG Anunoby in exchange for homegrown franchise faces RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley.
The Toronto franchise will be the WNBA's 14th and is set to begin play in 2026. It will be the WNBA's first team to regularly play its games beyond United States' borders, tipping off at Coca-Cola Coliseum at Exhibition Place.
“Bringing a WNBA team to Toronto represents an important milestone for our league as we continue to expand both domestically and outside the United States,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement. “With Larry Tanenbaum’s distinguished record of leading successful sports franchises and Toronto’s appeal as a dynamic, diverse city that cares deeply about the game of basketball, we are confident that this new team will thrive as a first-class WNBA organization and become a great source of inspiration and support for the Toronto-area community and across Canada.”
GEOFF MAGLIOCCHETTI
Editor-In-Chief at All Knicks