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Unique response Raptors coach sues Knicks' Camby over comments
Posted: Saturday April 22, 2000 10:48 PM
NEW YORK (AP) -- Toronto Raptors coach Butch Carter filed a $5 million defamation suit against New York Knicks forward Marcus Camby. Carter, whose team faces the Knicks in the first round of the NBA playoffs Sunday, filed the suit against his former player after Camby called the coach "a liar." "I'm responding to an article of untruths in the only manner I can," Carter told the New York Daily News on Saturday from Orlando, Fla. "That's through the courts." Camby was served papers after Friday night's practice. The suit was filed Friday in New York Supreme Court in White Plains. "It's crazy," Camby told the Daily News on Saturday. "Me and my teammates are not going to let it be a distraction. It's silly and I'm just going to go out and play my game.
"I'll be confident that I will be ready to play. I am focused and ready. (The lawsuit) is making me more focused and intense." Camby, traded to the Knicks from Toronto before the 1998-99 season, said this week that Carter had promised that the Raptors planned to build their team around him. The trade quickly followed. "He is a liar," Camby told the Daily News on Wednesday before the Knicks played their final regular-season game in Boston. "I don't really like him. No one likes him and no one wants to play for him. That's the kind of guy he is. "I don't trust him ... I think a lot of guys don't trust him. "He's just been ratting out people and doing things his way. From what I hear, a lot of people are mad at him." Ron Klempner, an attorney for the players' union, addressed the suit in an interview with The New York Times. "Until we see it in black and white, we can't comment on it because it's such an incredible and unbelievable claim," Klempner said Saturday. "Any such claim would be insufficient legally on too many grounds to even begin counting. I don't think they want to have a precedent with players starting to sue coaches for coaches' comments about players."
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