In 2007, a jury ordered James Dolan, the chairman of the New York Knicks’ and Madison Square Garden’s parent organization, to pay $3 million (with MSG paying the remainder of a $11.6 million settlement) to an executive named Anucha Browne Sanders who said she was sexually harassed by Isiah Thomas, the team’s coach.*
Tuesday, the Knicks’ parent company hired Isiah Thomas as president of the WNBA New York Liberty. That’s W as in women’s basketball.
Thomas, a star player for the NBA’s Detroit Pistons in the 1980s, also served from 2003 until 2008 as the Knicks’ president, a role in which he was phenomenally, perhaps unprecedentedly, unsuccessful. After leaving the Knicks, he took a job coaching at Florida International University from which he was fired in 2012. His record as FIU coach was 26–65.
*Correction, May 6, 2015: This post originally misstated that the Knicks’ parent organization had to pay the entirety of the $11.6 million settlement.
