You thought the damages were coming out of Chris Drury’s salary? From the New York Daily News’ Mike Jaccarino :

The jury evidentally believes New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas sexually harassed a former team executive and that Madison Square Garden fired the woman after she complained.

There was no official verdict in Manhattan Federal Court, but the wording of a note the panel sent the judge this afternoon indicated the jury has decided most of they key points in the suit filed by Anucha Browne Sanders.

The jurors said they had reached decisions on eight of the nine questions on the jury form, but they were deadlocked on the other question, which asks whether Thomas should have to pay punitive damages.

That question would only be relevant if the jury believed Thomas and Madison Square Garden, the Knicks’ parent, had committed harassment.

The judge sent the jury home for the day, asking them to try to reach a decision on the final question tomorrow.

There was no comment from Browne Sanders, Thomas or their attorneys as they left the courthouse, but Browne Sanders looked pleased and Thomas – his trademark grin nowhere in sight – ducked his head as he passed reporters.

Observing the scene unfolding at the Federal Courthouse, the New Yorker’s Nick Paumgarten compares the alleged working environment at MSG to a beloved contemporary situation comedy.

In spite of, or perhaps even because of, the lurid particulars (Marbury: œAre you going to get in the truck? Intern: œSo I got in the truck), the proceedings brought to mind an episode of œThe Office. In œThe Office, the mid-level employees of a paper company routinely harass and/or sleep with each other, make insensitive comments, and in general endure the indignities of corporate tedium and hierarchal close quartering. The dissections, during the Garden trial, of encounters such as the moment of Thomas™s allegedly amorous attempted kiss, and of his subsequent comment”œWhat? No love today?”were reminiscent of some of the tortured self-justifications that Steve Carell™s oaf of a boss might deploy in a similar bind.

An interesting observation, but not the first (or even the second) time  “The Office” has been invoked in relation to James Dolan’s Garden Of Ineptitude.