In a wild turn of events, the New York Knicks have reportedly filed a lawsuit against the Toronto Raptors, their new head coach, a former Knicks employee, and several other individuals for theft of proprietary information.
Over the last year, the New York Knicks and Toronto Raptors have been linked to each other via some recent NBA trade rumors. Toronto is a team at a bit of a crossroads and New York has rumored interest in top stars Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby. However, the two organizations are now shockingly linked by litigation.
On Monday, The Athletic reported that the Knicks have filed a lawsuit in a New York federal court against the Raptors, their parent company Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment, new Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković, the team’s player development coach Noah Lewis, 10 unnamed John Does, and former Knicks employee Ikechukwu Azotam. The suit claims Azotam stole proprietary information from the organization and took it with him to his new job with the rival franchise.
The suit alleges that the former New York director of video, analytics, and player development, took proprietary information from the team, including “scouting reports, play frequency reports, a prep book, and a link to third-party licensed software,” and used it to help the new Raptors coach better acclimate to his first head coaching role in the NBA.
New York Knicks claim former employee stole over 3,000 files
New York claims that in July when Azotam informed the Knicks he had an offer from Toronto, he started to forward key internal information from an email account to his personal Gmail account. The Knicks lawsuit also alleges that not only did Rajaković know about the apparent theft, but that he “recruited and used” Azotam to help him put together his operations and first coaching staff.
The former New York Knicks video and development assistant supposedly transferred “3,000 files with film and data, including 3,358 video files” before the organization eventually discovered what he was doing a few weeks ago.
“As a first-time NBA head coach, Defendant Rajaković would be expected to bring his own organizational structure and coaching method,” the suit states. “Apparently, given his non-traditional path to his head coaching job, Defendant Rajaković did not have his own, so he chose to exploit the Knicks’ methods.”
The Toronto Raptors and MLSE deny the claims in the lawsuit.