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Sports

HBO Real Sports Interviews Jim Dolan and Isiah Thomas About Sexual Harassment Suit

Jim Dolan and Isiah talking about the Anucha Browne Sanders sexual harassment lawsuit.

HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel debuts Tuesday night with a segment on Jim Dolan and Isiah Thomas. HBO released this short teaser clip, which includes both men talking the sexual harassment suit filed by former Knicks executive Anucha Browne Sanders.

In 2007, a jury found that Thomas did sexually harass Browne Sanders and awarded her $11.6 million in punitive damages. When the ruling was announced, compensatory damages were to be determined by a judge at a later time. Two months later, on the eve of the compensatory damages hearing, the entire case was settled for $11.5 million. On May 5th of this year, Dolan hired Thomas as president of his WNBA team, the New York Liberty.

That's your background for this interview, where Dolan and Thomas continue to deny any wrongdoing despite settling the case for $100,000 less than the jury previously awarded against them. Dolan has never spoken about the matter publicly until he sat down with Gumbel for HBO. When pressed whether he thinks Browne Sanders just made up her claims he says "I think of bunch of it she did, yeah."

Both Thomas and Dolan are confronted with the response to his recent re-hiring and they seem to understand why it was so harsh. Thomas even "respect[s] it, their thoughts, their feelings around this issue," which is charitable. Dolan does accept the blame for at least one portion of the whole episode, though. When Gumbel asks him if the reports are true that he could have settled the case for "a few hundred thousand dollars," Dolan responds "yep, my fault."