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Nearly a decade after a sexual harassment scandal involving Isiah Thomas cost James Dolan’s company $11.5 million, the former Knicks coach and president will soon once again be tied to the organization as a member of its board of directors.
Thomas will sit on the board for MSG Knickerbockers Corp., the newly formed entity that will own the defending champion Knicks and their G League affiliate, the Westchester Knicks, according to a Wednesday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Among other board members, Thomas will be joined by Irving Azoff, manager of famous rock band The Eagles, who Dolan’s band—JD and the Straight Shot—has opened for. As a member of the board of directors, Thomas will not be an employee of MSG Knickerbockers or have any role in business operations.
The revelation that Thomas will rejoin the Knicks later this month as a member of their board of directors puzzled Boyar Value Group president Jonathan Boyar—an investor in MSG Sports who pushed for a spinoff last summer, roughly eight months before MSG announced it was weighing one.
“This is exactly why fans and investors have such a negative view of Dolan,” Boyar tells Front Office Sports. “He could have gotten anyone to be on this board, any Knicks fan who is famous. Why have such a polarizing guy? What does he bring to the table?”
“I’d rather have Ben Stiller,” he says. “Or Fat Joe.”
Overall, Boyar is happy about the spinoff, which was approved by the MSG Sports Corp. board of directors Wednesday. Thomas’s role as a board member will begin once the deal is completed on Oct. 26. That’s also when MSG Knickerbockers will begin trading as an independent entity on the New York Stock Exchange, while the Rangers will trade separately under the name MSG Rangers Corp. Their individual valuations are not yet clear. MSG Sports currently has a market capitalization of about $9.5 billion. Forbes values the Knicks at $9.75 billion. Existing MSG Sports shareholders will keep their shares in MSG Knickerbockers and receive additional shares in the newly created MSG Rangers company, according to the SEC filing.
“This has been a long time coming,” Boyar tells FOS.
Whether Boyar’s public pressure had anything to do with the spinoff decision is unclear. MSG has made no reference to him or his public campaign. Boyar doesn’t care. “To get into Dolan’s head is impossible,” he says. “I’m just glad they did the right thing. I’m a happy shareholder.”
Thomas, 65, had a storied career in the NBA for the Pistons, winning two championships and being elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Following his retirement in 1994, he was EVP of the Raptors and then head coach for the Pacers, before being hired by Dolan in 2003 to serve as president and general manager of the Knicks. In 2006, he assumed the role of head coach. The Knicks with Thomas in a leadership role did not perform well; over the course of seven seasons, they made the playoffs once. He was fired in 2008 by the team’s then-new president Donnie Walsh.
In between taking over as head coach and being fired, Thomas, Dolan, and MSG were sued by Anucha Browne Sanders, a former MSG marketing executive, over claims that Thomas sexually harassed her during work. The suit ultimately settled for $11.5 million in December 2007.
Dolan has never wavered in his support of Thomas. In 2015, he hired Thomas to run the Liberty (Dolan owned the Liberty from 1997 until 2019, when he sold the WNBA team to Nets owner Joe Tsai).
Thomas already sat on the board of Dolan’s Sphere Entertainment Co., and he also sits on the board of United Wholesale Mortgage, the company owned by Suns governor Mat Ishbia.
MSG Sports declined to comment.
