HE FOULED ME REF!
Ex-MSG boss stole agent’s star NBA clients: suit
Show me the money, Hank! Atop NBA agent who likens himself to Jerry Maguire has sued former Madison Square Garden CEO Hank Ratner for $30 million, claiming the veteran sports mogul tried to poach his A-list basketball clients and destroy his career.
In the explosive lawsuit filed in California court Thursday, agent Dan Fegan — whose high-profile hoop clients have included John Wall, Ricky Rubio and Amar’e Stoudemire — claims he helped Ratner land a job at his former LA agency in May 2016, two years after Ratner got sidelined by MSG’s billionaire owner James Dolan.
Fegan, then president of Independent Sports & Entertainment’s basketball division, claims ISE’s majority owner, billionaire Ron Burkle, took “Fegan’s recommendation” to hire Ratner as CEO.
That’s despite Ratner’s reputation as “a difficult, nasty and bullying boss” during his fiveyear tenure at MSG, the suit claims.
“Ratner blamed his nasty actions while CEO of Madison Square Garden on Garden Chairman Jim Dolan Jr.,” Fegan alleges. “Hank Ratner stated that ‘If Jim wanted me to pick a fight with the Mayor, that’s what I did.’ ”
The suit even claims that Ratner allegedly told Fegan that it was Dolan’s idea to force former Knicks head coach Isiah Thomas to endure “a nasty public trial” in 2007 over sex-harassment charges by former MSG exec Anucha Browne Sanders.
“It was Jim’s decision,” Ratner lamented to Fegan, according to the suit. “If Jim wanted to pursue an ugly, public lawsuit, that’s what I had to do.”
The headline-grabbing legal spat ended up with Browne Sanders winning an $11.5 million settlement in 2007.
“It appears Mr. Fegan has a vivid imagination derived from reading press reports whenit comes to preparing his lawsuit,” MSG spokesman Barry Watkins told The Post.
“The fantastical tale alleged by Mr. Fegan in this publicity stunt of a complaint bears no resemblance to reality,” said a spokesman for ISE, which meanwhile has sued Fegan, charging he tried to orchestrate a “mass exodus” of its agents as he got fired in March.
“While ISE will continue to pursue its claims against Mr. Fegan for breach of contract, it remains focused on delivering exceptional representation to its clients.”
But according to Fegan, his time at ISE under Ratner, in which he claims the company lured away a half-dozen clients as it fired him, was a dark version of “Jerry Maguire,” the 1996 Tom Cruise movie.
“Fegan certainly has firsthand experience regarding how Jerry felt having his clients stolen, and Ratner played Jerry Maguire’s former friend, Bob Sugar, who callously stole Jerry’s clients, to perfection,” according to the suit.
By November 2016, after Ratner installed his son Michael in Fegan’s basketball division, Fegan says he was already marginalized.
“Agents and other employees of ISE began to joke among themselves that if you wanted something done, ‘you must first speak to Prince Rat (Michael Ratner) in order to get anything from King Rat (Hank Ratner),’ ” according to the suit.
The younger Ratner “particularly enjoyed the attention and access to supermodels and Hollywood stars, like Hailey Baldwin and Bella Hadid — which they talked about all the time,” Fegan complains.