The New York Knicks and Toronto Raptors have mutually and voluntarily decided to dismiss a lawsuit filed in 2023, which most people around the league thought should never have been filed, a story broken by Baxter Holmes for ESPN. A spokesperson for the teams gave ESPN this statement:
“The Knicks and [Raptors owner] Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment withdrew their respective claims and the matter is resolved. The Parties are focused on the future.”
The lawsuit was over something seen as commonplace in NBA circles (sources who had been in similar jobs told NBC Sports at the time that this was no big deal and the suit seemed “very James Dolan”). New York was seeking $10 million in damages from Toronto for the alleged “theft of trade secrets” when the Raptors hired away New York’s director of video/analytics/and a player development assistant coach, Ikechukwu Azotam. In the suit, the Knicks alleged that the Raptors organization — at the behest of rookie head coach Darko Rajakovic — took more than 3,000 confidential, proprietary files, including video scouting files and play frequency numbers. Part of the Knicks’ argument was that Rajakovic didn’t have the depth of background to build a team structure, so he stole that from New York. That despite the fact that Rajakovic had been a legendary head coach in Serbia, was head coach of the Tulsa 66ers of the G-League, and was an assistant known for player development with the Thunder, Suns and Grizzlies.
Toronto’s first counterargument was that this had to be decided by the NBA league office and commissioner Adam Silver, not the courts. Toronto reached out to the NBA’s general council and pointed out that the NBA’s constitution (Article 24, bylaw “D”) states: “The Commissioner shall have exclusive, full, complete, and final jurisdiction of any dispute involving two (2) or more Members of the Association.” Dolan, who has had a long-running feud with Silver, did not feel the commissioner would be an unbiased arbiter of the situation.
In the end, both sides just decided to drop the issue and move on.
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