The NBA has finally reached out to the Knicks and Raptors to investigate allegations over stolen files, The Post’s Stefan Bondy reported on Monday.
It comes after the Knicks and Raptors had agreed in a joint filing that the NBA had not provided any update on the matter by Dec. 13, which had been requested by a federal court after the Knicks filed suit against the Raptors accusing video coordinator Ike Azotam of taking files to his new role with Toronto.
“The NBA has admitted to sitting on this serious theft of proprietary and confidential files for several months,” an MSG Sports spokesperson told The Post. “The NBA has a clear conflict of interest and a lack of desire to see a fair outcome in this matter — which we’ve said all along.”
The Knicks first filed suit against the Raptors in August 2023, accusing Azotam, a former team employee, of “illegally taking thousands of proprietary files with him to his new position.”
The Knicks were seeking $10 million in damages as part of the legal filing.
A federal judge ruled in June that the dispute between the two NBA franchises should be arbitrated by NBA commissioner Adam Silver and had requested an update from the league by last Friday.
The Knicks have contested that Silver would not be an unbiased decision-maker in the matter due to his connection to Larry Tanenbaum, a part-owner of the Raptors and the NBA’s chairman of the Board of Governors.
In court filings, the Knicks had argued that Tanenbaum “serves as Silver’s boss and exercises control over and heavily influences Silver’s continued employment and salary.”
Silver refused to respond to questions about his objectivity when he spoke with reporters in Las Vegas after the owners meetings in July.
“The second part of your question [about the Knicks questioning my objectivity], I won’t respond to,” Silver said at the time while discussing the court’s decision to have the NBA handle the matter.
“The first part is that we did receive notice of the court’s decision and are in the process of working through those issues at the league office right now.”
