10.03.07
About Isaiah Thomas
It’s not China-related or particularly Olympics-related, but it’s important and it relates to everything you know, and some things you might not want to know, about the business of sports in the United States. The New York Knicks organization and coach Isaiah Thomas were found liable for damages yesterday in a sexual-harassment trial brought by a former vice president, Anucha Browne Sanders. The way her name was dragged through the mud during the trial was sickening…and the $11.6 million verdict she received yesterday in her favor was heartening. We don’t even talk about it because it’s so prevalent: when you’re a woman involved in professional sports in the United States, an exceedingly male-dominated field, you’re almost always in a potentially hostile environment. We feel it 24/7.
Pro teams sometimes make women feel welcome in their locker rooms (that’s the only place to do a post-game press conference in the NBA, unless they bring a single player with the coach to the interview room)…and sometimes, not so much. I’ve personally had two different NBA teams make me feel as though I didn’t belong in a place where I was credentialed to be, doing my job. Shame on them. I don’t call them out publicly because, well, then I don’t get access to their players. Suffice it to say that both teams went far in the playoffs this past year, and both teams are made up of mostly decent people, plus a lout or two that people turn a blind eye to in order to keep the peace, or as you’ll see in the article link below, because perhaps treating women badly isn’t high on the NBA food chain of punishable offenses.
SI.com’s Aditi Kinkhabwala has something pretty revealing to say about the professional lives of women writers in men’s professional sports (in the United States, we get far fewer chances to cover top-flight women’s sports than writers overseas - though as a contributor to Sports Illustrated China, I’ve been gratified to have four of my five cover stories on women athletes over the course of just one year - pretty amazing). The next time you see a woman’s byline on an article about the NBA, or the NFL, or Major League Baseball, remember that she’s likely had to fight through a lot of unwelcome treatment to get that story to you.
Message delivered: Sanders’ stand is an important victory for women (SI.com)
Jury finds against Knicks and coach (New York Times)
Thomas jets from the frying pan into the fire (New York Times)
And from Selena Roberts of the New York Times, another of my favorite sportswriters, more truth-telling from Madison Square Garden:
The Garden needs a warning label (New York Times)