Just when you thought their sexual-harassment trial couldn't get any more damaging for the Knicks, they shoot themselves in the foot. In a taped deposition by Madison Square Garden head honcho Jimmy Dolan, shown yesterday in court, the burly boss explained that plaintiff Anucha Browne Sanders was fired because she made sexual-harassment charges. And incidentally, at the Garden, it's not harassment to use the N-word to describe a black person (this was revealed by aging exec Rusty McCormack. Andrea Peyser, back on her game since yesterday, describes McCormack as having "the complexion the approximate shade of ripe cheese.") Of course, the question blaring from every news outlet is "Why are they still in this trial? Settle already!" The answer is simpler than you think.

On Monday, even former NBA star Magic Johnson told New York reporter Jada Yuan that "nobody wants to be in this suit." "I’m sure [Isiah] doesn’t," he said, adding that the two are good friends. "It’s too bad for the organization, and it’s too bad for the city because everybody loves the Knicks." But we suspect the organization does want to fight this thing out in court, so it can be publicly vindicated. Dolan, whose family owns Radio City Music Hall, the Garden, Cablevision, and the Rangers, certainly can afford to settle. But his die-hard fealty to Isiah Thomas actually leads him to believe that they will win this case — even faced with all evidence to the contrary. So count on this trial to drag out in all of its muck-ridden glory until the bitter end. You'd think Dolan would see the writing on the courtroom wall by now and cut his losses. But then again, you'd think after three horrendous Knicks seasons, he'd have given up his delusional belief that Thomas could win anything at all.

James Dolan fired Brown-Sanders for interfering with probe [NYDN]

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