White men better not call a black woman “bitch” around Knicks coach Isiah Thomas, but if black men do it – well, that’s fair game.
“I’m sorry to say, I do make a distinction,” Thomas said in a videotaped admission viewed by a Manhattan federal jury yesterday.
“A white man calling a black female ‘bitch,’ that is wrong with me. I am not accepting that. That’s a problem for me,” he said.
But asked if he’d have a problem with a black man calling a black woman “bitch,” Thomas said, “Not as much.”
The videotaped deposition was played by lawyers for fired Knick executive Anucha Browne Sanders.
Sanders has accused Thomas of spewing profanity at her, calling her “bitch,” “f- – -ing bitch,” and “ho,” before suddenly changing tactics to profess his love.
Sanders, former vice president of marketing for the Knicks, claims she was fired after complaining about Thomas. She is seeking job reinstatement and $10 million.
Asked on tape whether he’d ever directed profanity at Sanders, Thomas said, “I have never cursed at Ms. Sanders. Now, have I ever sworn or used curse words around her? I probably have.”
“Did you ever refer to Ms. Sanders as a ‘ho’?” the lawyer asked.
“Please, no. Come on,” the coach replied.
Thomas also denied being attracted to Sanders, or ever saying he was.
“I’m not attracted to her, no,” said Thomas.
The lawyer on the tape zeroed in on an open practice in October 2005, asking Thomas if he introduced Sanders to a guest at the Garden as being “easy on the eyes” and a distraction.
“No, I don’t think so,” an animated Thomas said.
Thomas also is accused of trying to hug and kiss Sanders at the open practice – and whining, “No love today?” when she rejected him. Testimony from a lawyer and Knicks season-ticket holder, Robert Levy, appeared to bolster Sanders.
Levy said he was at the open practice when he spotted Thomas put his arm around Sanders’ shoulders as she chatted with another man and overheard the coach say “it was distracting working with someone easy on the eyes.”
An uncomfortable Sanders recoiled, Levy said.
In a statement yesterday, Thomas said, “Let’s not mischaracterize what I said. What I said is it is always wrong for any man to call a woman a bitch. I didn’t do that, and I would never do that.”
Sanders admitted under cross-examination that she omitted some of her most salacious allegations in e-mails and journal entries documenting her complaints to MSG bigs.
She also copped to filing fraudulent tax returns from 2001 to 2004, claiming she had a marketing business that didn’t exist and writing off up to $19,000 each year in expenses.
Meanwhile, Kathleen Decker, the former Knick intern that star Stephon Marbury testified to having sex with, left her Queens home yesterday with a suitcase.