New York Knicks guard Stephon Marbury was grilled about seedy sex with a team intern in a truck as he took the witness stand at his boss Isiah Thomas’ sexual harassment trial – a case he admitted he’s laughed off from the start.
Hunched in the hot-seat in a stylish tan checked jacket, Marbury ‘fessed up to crassly luring the college student into his vehicle outside a Manhattan strip club, calling out, “Are you going to get in the truck?”
“It really wasn’t a conversation,” said the cocky team captain, admitting he knew the woman was an intern but denying he was aware she was drunk.
Marbury was forced to admit to further encounters with the intern after the April 2005 incident, but was the judge quickly cut off the questioning since he is not a defendant in the lawsuit by fired Knicks executive Anucha Browne Sanders.
But the powerful point guard didn’t hesitate to take a shot at the sexual harassment case that charges his coach with verbally abusing Sanders for a year and then suddenly telling her he was “in love” and asking her to go “off-site.”
Sanders is suing for $10 million and job reinstatement.
“When you heard about this lawsuit, you thought it was funny, correct?” Sanders’ lawyer Anne Vladek asked.
“I laughed. I meant it was more of a joke than anything,” Marbury said.
The point guard said he and Sanders got off on the wrong foot from the minute he joined the team.
“I went to ask her for some (Madison Square Garden) passes. She told me this wasn’t Phoenix or New Jersey,” Marbury said. “She said, ‘I don’t know how things were done (there), but that’s not how we’re doing things here.'”
Their dynamic further soured when Sanders was forced to hire Marbury’s cousin, Hassan Gonsalvez, who was later fired from the Knicks after he forged supervisors’ signatures on time sheets and sexually harassing an employee.
Asked if he disliked Marbury, the basketball star said, “I never even had thought about her. I didn’t have a reason not to like her.”
But after a lawyer read from a transcript of a videotaped deposition that was taken before the trial, Marbury was forced to admit he felt animosity and had vented his anger at Sanders to another Knicks executive.
“Yes, I called her a bitch,” Marbury said. “I said a lot of different things…I may have said f– her. I didn’t call her a black bitch.”
Allegations of rampant verbal abuse is central Sanders’ case against Thomas, who she claims started every sentence to her with the word “bitch.”
But Marbury jumped to his coach’s defense, claiming he never heard his coach curse at Sanders, saying it was “not his persona.”
“That’s not his style,” Marbury said.
The hoops player then left the courthouse, grinning ear-to-ear and hopped into an elevator with a group of reporters, and said, “Man, money makes you do crazy things.”
Then the star paused and weirdly added, “I’m talking about that man who tried to jump off the thing for the cash.”
Asked about his antics with the intern as he walked down the street, a swaggering Marbury launched into obsessive commentary on one reporter’s tie and another reporter’s shoes and said, “I’m going to let you write what you all think.”
“I want to talk about your shoes,” Marbury said, vowing to include something similar in his plans for a clothing line.
When the questions continued, the basketball big burst into song until he was safely in his car.
Jurors got a darker picture of Marbury at the start of testimony yesterday, when Sanders described his sexual exploits in his truck during her most emotional moment during two days on the witness stand.
Weeping and sniffling, Sanders recalled how the distraught intern had told her, “I wouldn’t have gotten in (the truck), but I felt like I had to.”
“When she got into the car, she basically did whatever he wanted her to do. They basically had sexual relations,” said Sanders, dabbing her eyes as she revealed that the intern was dating Marbury’s cousin, who also worked for the Knicks.
“She considered it consensual because she got in the car,” Sanders said.
Contradicting Marbury’s claim that he’d picked up the intern outside the strip club, Sanders said the basketball star actually propositioned her at St. John’s University in Queens after following her and his cousin there in his truck.
“I was stunned,” Sanders said.
Sanders said she immediately reported the incident to Knicks officials, but they never question Marbury about the incident – a failure that the fired executive is using to bolster her case that the Garden failed to address sexual harassment complaints.
Sanders claims she was fired in December 2005 in retaliation for making numerous complaints about sexual harassment that she and other employees were forced to endure.
Vice president of marketing since 2000, Sanders testified that Marbury always disliked her, refusing to participate in promotional events and demanding special privileges against team rules.
Sanders recalled how she and Marbury got off on the wrong foot when he demanded the special passes for his pals.
“He turned around and he said, ‘F– this,'” Sanders said.
At about the same time, Sanders learned Marbury was cursing her behind her back, calling her “black bitch,” and made additional complaints – only to get an ominous call from Knicks president Steven Mills.
“Isiah Thomas is going to start a rumor about you having an affair with … another employee in the office,” Mills allegedly told Sanders.
“Is that a threat?” Sanders recalled asking Mills, who answered, “That’s not a threat.”