NYC- Knicks President and basketball legend Isiah Thomas was at the center of a bombshell lawsuit last night after a senior female employee alleged she had been the target of harassment.
Anucha Browne Sanders, the team's former high-profile senior vice president of marketing, filed papers against the hoops great in Manhattan Federal Court yesterday - claiming Thomas called her a "b----" and asked her to have sex.
She said when she refused his advances, the 44-year-old married father replied: "What? I can't get any love today?"
Thomas' legal team immediately branded Browne Sanders an opportunist - charging her complaints followed a failed attempt to extort $6 million. And the lawyers charged she was using Hall of Famer Thomas' standing to aid her case.
"This lawsuit is a blatant attempt by Anucha Browne Sanders to get a large sum of money from Madison Square Garden by taking advantage of the celebrity status of our client," said Thomas' attorneys Peter Parcher and Sue Ellen Eisenberg.
"While still employed, she demanded from the Garden, as a condition of her departure, a payment of $6 million, which is more than 20 years of her salary."
But Browne Sanders says Thomas' alleged shabby treatment of her was so public that team members - including star player Stephon Marbury - joined in the abuse.
"The Knicks' star player felt free to refer to Browne Sanders as a 'black b----,'" the lawsuit states.
In another accusation sure to draw major attention, Browne Sanders claims Thomas worked with concierges at hotels frequented by visiting teams to encourage out-of-town players to go to certain bars and strip clubs and get drunk the night before a day game.
Thomas launched his alleged campaign against Browne Sanders - a former college basketball standout who became a rising executive - in March 2004, following a loss by the struggling Knicks, the suit claims.
He blamed their poor performance on a late-night public relations event the night before.
"Thomas grabbed Browne Sanders' arm and pulled her into a small room to the side of the team's locker room," the papers claim. "He yelled that the team was not going to do 'any more f------ events.'"
Browne Sanders was barred from speaking directly to team members, she said - a situation that got so bad she was forced to use cardboard cutouts of players in marketing campaigns.
A few months later, the 43-year-old mother of three from Short Hills, N.J., contends, Thomas made sexual advances.
"After the Knicks game on December 30, 2004, Thomas stopped Browne Sanders, hugged her tightly and said that he had determined why he and Browne Sanders 'had problems' with one another," the suit says.
"Thomas told Browne Sanders he was 'in love' with her."
The suit claims such advances became regular, and that she complained to team higherups - though no action was taken.
"On more than one occasion, [Thomas asked her] if she would meet with him outside of the office or 'offsite,'" the lawsuit contends. "Browne Sanders understood these requests as sexual advances, which she refused."
Browne Sanders also said she was ordered by Garden chairman James Dolan to create positions for unqualified employees - including two cousins of Marbury's and Dolan's gardener.
The situation came to a head last month. A Garden source said last night, "Before Christmas, she went to the management and said, 'Look, I'm a victim of harassment and I don't think I can work here anymore.'
"The Knicks said they would do a full investigation and she should take time off while that was done.
"Two or three days ago, she was officially fired. She said, 'If you want to let me go, you should pay me $6 million.'
"She was screaming and yelling and her behavior was erratic. The Garden made a tough call because it would have been easy for them to come to some kind of settlement, but they feel nothing has been done wrong here."
Browne Sanders' lawsuit, which claims discrimination and charges she was fired in retaliation for complaining, demands her reinstatement and a payment of damages. It doesn't state an amount.
Ron Green, the Garden's attorney, said last night, "This fabricated and outrageous charge comes from an individual who Madison Square Garden fired because of an inability to fulfill her professional responsibilities, and who is now seeking a financial windfall.
"We will fight these outrageous charges and defend our employees from allegations intended to embarrass and do harm to them."
But Kevin Mintzer, representing Browne Sanders, said, "Mr. Green was in our offices [yesterday] and acknowledged she had substantial claims.
"Even celebrities are not above the law, and it's pathetic that [Thomas] should hide behind his celebrity status. The $6 million claim is false, and [his legal team] know[s] it."
Browne Sanders was hired by the Knicks five years ago by Thomas' predecessor, Scott Layden. She became the only female senior manager at the Knicks - and a rising star in sports marketing who even had her own page in the Knicks yearbook.
Thomas, who has two children with his wife, Lynn, has her full support, said the source.
"She is outraged. She is totally 100% standing by his side," he said. "This is all done to embarrass him and get some money."
NY Post writes: Isiah Thomas is a foul-mouthed, slobbering harasser who propositioned the Knicks' former top marketing exec for sex - and even plotted to lure opposing teams to boozy strip joints to throw off their games, an explosive new lawsuit charges.
"I know you think I'm inappropriate, but I'm in love with you," Knick President Thomas allegedly cooed to statuesque, then-Vice President Anucha Browne Sanders, according to her suit, which was filed in Manhattan yesterday.
Sanders - an attractive ex-college basketball star and married, 43-year-old mom of three - charges that Thomas' fouls began almost immediately after the former Detroit Pistons hoop legend took over as president of the Knicks at the end of 2003.
"Contrary to Thomas' carefully cultivated public persona, he is capable of abhorrent behavior in private," alleges the lawsuit, which formally charges sex discrimination and then retaliation after Sanders complained and was fired.
"Soon after his hire, he began to sexually harass Sanders, including calling her 'bitch' and 'ho' to her face," the suit says.
"Sexual advances" quickly followed, as the married dad of two began "repeatedly professing his love for [Sanders], making comments about her physical appearance and suggesting that they go 'offsite' together, a thinly veiled solicitation for sex," the suit says.
A man answering Thomas' cellphone hung up last night when a reporter asked for him.
Sanders is suing for unspecified monetary damages - and her job back.
Thomas' lawyers quickly denied the allegations as "a blatant and cynical attempt . . . to get a large sum of money from Madison Square Garden by exploiting the celebrity status of our client.
"While still employed, she demanded from the Garden as a condition of her departure a payment of $6 million, which is more than 20 years of her salary."
A well-placed source said that earlier this month, "[Sanders'] lawyer came to the Garden and said, 'I know how this problem can go away. Six million dollars' - that's what they wanted.
"The Garden said absolutely not, and they fired her."
One of Sanders' lawyers, Kevin Mitzer, denied that exchange ever took place.
"It's not true, and they know it," he said last night.
One source close to the Knick prez insisted that Thomas "is a happily married man - I don't think [Sanders] was even on his radar. "
But Sanders - a former IBM honcho with an impressive record who once helped oversee marketing for that firm's Olympics sponsorship - charges that Thomas' repulsive behavior wasn't limited to her.
In October 2004, "a female employee of the Knicks told Sanders that Thomas had instructed her to flirt with certain men connected to the game and make them happy," her suit alleges.
Then early last year, "Thomas told [her] he was pushing to get more Sunday noon games on the schedule," the lawsuit says.
"Thomas said he was working with the concierges of the hotels frequented by the visiting teams to have the concierges direct players to certain nightclubs - including strip clubs - that Thomas had established relationships with.
"Thomas said that his plan was to induce visiting players to go to these clubs on Saturday night and get them intoxicated so that they would not be prepared to play on Sunday," she says in the suit.
Thomas had been asked to leave work at the end of December while MSG's internal probe into the allegations continued, one source said.
The in-house investigation wound up finding Sanders' complaints "completely untrue," a source said.
But the suit says that only a week after Sanders left work voluntarily before her firing, Thomas "hugged her and tried to kiss her."
The New Jersey mom says that during the past two years, she was so disgusted that she repeatedly complained to her direct boss, MSG President Stephen Mills, and urged him to force Thomas to undergo sexual-harassment therapy - to no avail.
Amid her griping, the 44-year-old Thomas vacillated between blasting her as a "f- - -ing bitch" and continuing to issue suggestive come-ons to her, the suit charges.
Sanders says Thomas became so incensed over her blatant rejections that he turned many of the Knicks' players against her as she tried to market the franchise.
She claims that team superstar Stephon Marbury would routinely blast her as "that black bitch.
"F- - - that black bitch, she thinks she runs the Knicks, but she don't run sh- -!" she quotes Marbury as spouting off. Marbury's agent declined comment last night.
A key source said that at one point, Thomas "did not agree with all of [Sanders] marketing philosophies and schemes."
Thomas was particularly upset that Sanders - who is the fourth leading scorer in Big 10 basketball history after a stellar stint at Northwestern University - tried to get him to record voice messages as part of a phone pitch to draw more fans to games.
"He said, 'I'm not doing that,' " the source said.
Thomas griped to Sanders' boss, who eventually reduced her responsibilities, the source said.
"She blamed Isiah for this and complained to [Mills] all the time" afterward, the source said.
In her suit, Sanders claims that when she met with a human-resources consultant in mid-2005, the worker told her that Mills "had asked him to develop a program for Thomas because he has problems with women."
Toward the end of the year, the suit says, Mills warned her that if she "persisted in raising harassment claims, she should be prepared for Thomas to spread a damaging and false rumor" about her.
Sanders' lawyer, Mitzer, said he was told by the other side as recently as yesterday morning that "Ms. Browne Sanders had substantial claims against MSG, and that the retaliation claim in particular could be difficult . . . to defend."
Still, a source sympathetic to Thomas said:
"Isiah Thomas is a self-made guy. He always has been not only wildly successful as a player but as an executive. And in spite of this threat . . . he and his family have decided that there's no way they're giving in to this."
