Another Cablevision Mess

So, this guy walks into this place where he's a pretty big deal, right? He's used to being treated like a superstar and he runs his life accordingly. He spies someone that he finds attractive and starts in with the tact that works in romantic comedies but in real life would get dudes arrested. Problem is, this woman isn't interested but he is a smooth talker and figures if he is persistent and calls her all sorts of cutesy pet names--like bitch and ho--that she'll melt faster than a popsicle on the sidewalk in the middle of July.

Sounds ridiculous, right? But it isn't. This is actually what has been going on in a New York courtroom--a courtroom full of people who just found Knicks president Isiah Thomas guilty of sexual harassment. Bad in itself. Even worse is the fact that Cablevision president Jim Dolan let this whole situation go to trial. You can generally sweep these things under the rug simply by throwing money at the accuser. But Jim Dolan likes a good and senseless fight so he allowed this to go to trial so that the Knick dirty laundry got aired and splashed across the back pages of the city tabloids.

This is the same joker who forced Cablevision subscribers who were Yankee fans to sit by and not see any of their team's games because the Yankees had the audacity to end their relationship with the MSG Network and then started their own TV channel, YES. Cablevision went to court over who-knows-what and fans of the Yankees in New York could only see their team play on Fox or ESPN or whatever not because they really had a beef with the Yankees or with baseball, but because the team dared take their ball to another outlet and that made the MSG Network essentially useless in the summer months.

I've explained that to tell you this: the Rangers and (that guy again) Jim Dolan are now suing the NHL because the league wants to control the layout and content for all team websites; you know, like all of the other major sports leagues do. The Rangers are also whining about some marketing issues and the fact that they don't want the league to be in charge of marketing the Rangers name because they can do a better job of it.

That part, now that I think about it, might be true. The bigger picture here is that someone is wanting to take another toy out of Jim Dolan's rec room and boy is he pissed off about it. Might not even be a toy that he even plays with any more but it is his, dammit, and you can't have it.

Is there any other owner in sports that comes off worse than Jim Dolan? He is so the spoiled little boy of privilege that has never had to work for his money and he'll be damned if any of the (ahem) little people are going to tell him what to do with it. The Isiah Thomas trial proved it. Watch his recorded depositions. He clearly is a guy who while a bit clueless, is also concerned with looking like the leader even though it's painfully obvious that he is the worst guy for that job. That's why he hires empty suits like Steve Mills, who is the Garden COO and admits to promoting and giving bonuses to Anucha Browne Sanders, the woman who filed the suit, even though he thought she was incompetent and had trouble submitting her budget reports. (TPS anyone?)

And then you have Thomas, a man who told the court in his videotaped deposition that a black man has more latitude than a white man to call a woman a bitch--even as he is intoning lessons from his sainted mother about treating women with respect. Remember, he also said that Larry Bird would be "just another good basketball player" if he were born black and not white.

These are the kind of people Dolan surrounds himself with--incompetent yes men who, like Mills, can intone all they want about what is best for the company and yet are enabling star players at every turn. That leaves Dolan running around like the kid form the old episode of The Twilight Zone--you know the one--where the kid has all of these evil, crazy powers that he can use to ruin lives on a whim and all of the adults go around sucking up to him, telling him it's so good that he zapped a barking dog into a potted plant or turned his dad into some weird sci-fi nightmare. Jim Dolan is that kid!

So today the jury did rule that Dolan and the Garden were liable for punitive damages but they have yet to return any ruling on a monetary award. So Dolan, Cablevision, the Knicks, and Ms. Browne Sanders are left twisting in the wind when all of this was patently un-necessary. Sure, if "Zeke" had just been able to act like an adult to his female co-workers, none of this would have been in the papers. But he didn't so it couldn't. Dolan decided to fight the claim instead of buying her off and letting it go away. Now we all know about Stephon Marbury, female interns, Isiah's smooth lines with the ladies, and how badly Jim Dolan comes off on videotape. This lawsuit has been the prefect storm of stupidity from the get-go.

Now, the big reveal. Why is all of this crap taking up space in what is mostly a blog about the New York Islanders? Well, here's the answer. James Dolan grew up on Long Island and was a huge Islanders fan growing up during the glory years of our beloved franchise. He's a man of means. He could've bought the Islanders and fulfilled some part of a dream that we all have entertained as fans: owning and running our favorite team. But he didn't. He and his family and their company bought MSG, the Knicks, and the Rangers instead. All I can say to that is thank goodness.

Take a big breath and a sigh of relief. Think about what could have been--and think about what we have in place with Mr. Wang and the boys in the brain trust now. We totally ducked one there.