The Knicks blamed commissioner Adam Silver’s bias for the NBA dragging its feet to investigate their explosive accusations against the Raptors.
“We’ve been waiting for any direction from the NBA on next steps in this matter for months — proving our point that the NBA is not capable of appropriately and fairly handling this serious theft of proprietary and confidential files,” read a statement to The Post from an MSG Sports spokesman. “Unfortunately, because of the clear conflict of interest between the Commissioner and the Chairman of the NBA, there has been complete silence from the league.”
Back in August 2023, the Knicks filed a lawsuit in court alleging their former video coordinator Ike Azotam had stolen “thousands of proprietary files” such as scouting secrets and shared them with his new employer, the Raptors.
The court ruled in June that the NBA should handle the dispute and requested an update by Dec. 13.
The Knicks and Raptors agreed in a joint filing Friday that there was no update.
“As of the date of this letter, the NBA has not yet set a process or schedule, and discovery has not commenced,” the letter read.
The Knicks had sought damages of more than $10 million from Toronto while claiming Silver is too compromised to fairly arbitrate the dispute because he’s beholden to Larry Tanenbaum, a part-owner of the Raptors and Chairman of the NBA.
Asked in July about the Knicks questioning his objectivity, Silver said, “I won’t respond.”
The commissioner added at the time that “we did receive notice of the court’s decision (to compel NBA arbitration) and are in the process of working through those issues at the league office right now.”
Apparently, there wasn’t much work done.
Knicks owner James Dolan has been warring with Silver over the NBA’s revenue-sharing system and new media rights deals, among other things.
Just last month, the Knicks accused the NBA of “harassment” through an investigation into the promotion of assistant coach Rick Brunson.
“We see this as more harassment of the Knicks due to our opposition to certain NBA matters,”
The league’s investigation concluded with the Knicks being cleared of anything improper.
