Doug Pensinger/Allsport
The NBA has always had an uncanny ability to produce some absurd drama, which includes the time former Raptors coach Butch Carter filed a lawsuit against Marcus Camby over some comments he made in an interview.
I think most NBA fans are at least familiar with Marcus Camby, who made a name for himself at UMass before he was selected by the Toronto Raptors with the second overall pick in the draft in 1996. However, the big man only played two seasons with the franchise before he was traded to the Knicks to continue a career that ultimately lasted for 17 seasons.
On the other hand, you’d need to be a pretty diehard basketball fan to remember Butch Carter. The shooting guard failed to make much of a mark during the six years he spent bouncing around the league in the 1980s, and he ultimately ended up as the head coach of the Raptors after Darrell Walker resigned following a brutal start to the 1997-98 campaign.
Carter finished that season with a 5-28 record at the helm (the team went 16-66), and it was clear some changes needed to be made. Over the summer, Camby was traded to New York in exchange for Charles Oakley and Sean Marks, and in 2000, he got the chance to face off against his former team in the first round of the playoffs—which is when things took a very unexpected turn.
Butch Carter sued Marcus Camby for calling him “a liar” in an interview
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Camby really came into his own after linking up with the Knicks, and it was pretty clear he was hoping to get some revenge against the Raptors based on how his time with the team came to an end.
Prior to their postseason showdown, the center spoke with the press and claimed Carter had told him the Raptors were gearing up to acquire some pieces that would help him take his game to the next level shortly before he was traded, which led to him saying:
“He is a liar…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.”
Camby was far from the first NBA player to call out a member of an organization for not being entirely straightforward (and he certainly wasn’t the last), and Carter said the accusations were “totally inaccurate” when he got the chance to respond.
That probably should have been the end of the matter, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
While you might think Camby and Carter would’ve been content with settling their dispute on the court, the latter decided it needed to be settled in a court of law.
Camby was at practice a couple of days before the teams were slated to kick off their playoff series when a process server dropped by his house and informed his girlfriend his former coach had filed a $5 million defamation lawsuit over the aforementioned comments.
The move by Carter—who said he was willing to drop the lawsuit if Camby issued an apology—was understandably met with disbelief by figures around the NBA, and it only took him a few days to reverse course while acknowledging “bringing the courthouse into the locker room was not the best way to address this particular matter.”
Camby ultimately got the last laugh, as the Knicks swept the Raptors in three games. Carter was fired two weeks later, and he would never coach another game in the NBA.