NBA Sets Date for Knicks, Raptors Lawsuit

The buzzer is finally set to sound on the New York Knicks' battle with the Toronto Raptors on a different kind of court.

Per Baxter Holmes of ESPN, the NBA will hold an arbitration hearing the week of July 21 to resolve the ongoing legal battle between the Atlantic Division rivals. The Knicks have accused the Raptors of proprietary theft, with former video department employee Ike Azotam and current Toronto head coach Darko Radakovic among the defendants.

Holmes' report corroborates December news from Stefan Bondy of the New York Post, which previously placed the date of the resolution in July.

The Knicks originally filed the suit against the Raptors in August 2023. Last summer, a New York judge ruled that NBA commissioner Adam Silver to oversee arbitration, a development that Knicks representatives took issue with because of his long-standing personal friendship with Larry Tannenbaum, the chairman of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the Raptors' parent company.

“We continue to remain skeptical of this process as the NBA has consistently demonstrated that it has no desire to address this blatant theft of proprietary information, likely because the Chairman of the NBA is the defendant," an MSG Sports spokesperson said in a statement to Knicks on SI. "It’s been 18 months since our original complaint was lodged and even after the court ordered the NBA to schedule a hearing, the NBA neglected to do so and only took action after the last filed joint status report in December.”

Azotam is accused of funneling proprietary information from the Knicks to the Raptors upon taking a job with the former in 2023. The ongoing legal battle did not prevent the two sides from dealings on the transaction ledger, as Precious Achiuwa, OG Anunoby, RJ Barrett, and Immanuel Quickley were swapped in a major December 2023 deal.

"I think there are a few different reasons that somebody would file a lawsuit like this, the first one being that you want to, for lack of a better term, you want to shut it down," Tampa-based attorney and proprietary legal expert Kevin C. Paule told Knicks on SI when speaking of the Knicks' motivations. "You want to stop people from being able to use your stuff to compete against you. So I think that's the next priority here. They obviously feel that what was taken is pretty important, pretty valuable to them."