During this period, NBA President Adam Shaw has had a lot of troubles.

On one hand, Jidi's private life scandal has had a negative impact on the image of the alliance; On the other hand, the lawsuit between the New York Knicks and the Toronto Raptors may also have a transformative impact on the future operation of the NBA league.

Starting from August this year, the New York Knicks sued the Knicks on the grounds that their former employee Ikchuku Azotan took away over 3000 so-called "confidential documents", including his scout reports, game frequency related documents, team game preparation documents, and edited videos, before joining the Toronto Raptors.

In fact, similar lawsuits have occurred in other sports leagues in North America before, but in the nearly 80 year history of the NBA league, there has never been a lawsuit between two teams for alleged "theft of trade secrets" and "illegal acquisition of competitive advantage".

On December 1st, ESPN used a lengthy article to restore the original cause of this dispute, and according to multiple NBA executives and team data analysts, regardless of the final outcome, this dispute may affect the NBA's future protection of the team's intellectual property rights.

The first spy lawsuit in history

The lawsuit between the New York Knicks and the Toronto Raptors can be traced back to mid August of this year, when the NBA's new season was still in preparation.

According to ESPN, the chief legal advisor of the Knicks wrote a two page lawyer's letter to Larry Tanenbaum, the owner of the Toronto Raptors at the time. The letter mentioned the "illegal activities" that the Raptors' current employee, Ikchuku Azotan, had carried out in the Knicks, as well as the information he had stolen about the Knicks team, Raptors coach Dako Rajakovic, and Raptors player development coach Noah Lewis, There are also 10 unidentified individuals involved.

The letter mentions that Ikchuku Azotan worked for the New York Knicks from 2020 to 2023. During his tenure, he served as a video coordination assistant for the Knicks, as well as a video/analysis/player development assistant.

According to the Chief Legal Advisor of the Knicks, after accepting an invitation from the Raptors management, he transferred the Knicks' internal game editing videos, scout reports, game frequency files, as well as the 2022-2023 season's game preparation and opponent research reports from the team's email to his personal email, and then shared them with the Raptors coaching staff and management. It is reported that as many as 3000 copies of "team business data" were involved.

The chief legal advisor of the Raptors replied to a statement with only 6 sentences via email, stating that the Raptors were unaware of any aspects of Azotan's work that were related to his time at the Knicks.

But the Raptors stated that they "have retained all records and are willing to cooperate in solving these issues.".

However, the Raptors' expressed willingness to cooperate did not convince the Knicks.