No matter what happens with the New York Knicks sexual harassment trial, the fans won't turn away. All the crisis PR people who keep going on television and talking to the newspapers, whining that the Knicks "brand" is getting damaged, should challenge themselves to come up with a number of people they think will not renew their season tickets solely because of this.
I'll give them a clue. The answer is less than 25 total seats will be vacated at Madison Square Garden. Yet how many people have given up on the Knicks because they aren't the winners they once were? Hundreds of tickets have turned over throughout the last couple years.
You see, despite all the front page headlines, all we have is the some bad language, perhaps an inappropriate moment and consensual sex between guard Stephon Marbury and a Knicks intern.
As Shaun Powell of Newsday correctly points out, whether the Knicks win or lose this case will have more to do with whether they wrongly terminated Anucha Browne Sanders and less to do with whether there was harassment involved.
So I ask all those who say this is very bad for the Knicks to tell me when throughout sports history have fans ever revolted or canceled their season tickets because of someone in the front office was wrongly fired.
What pundits should have learned from this scandalous summer in sports is that ticket sales are going to be related to a team's on field or on the court performance.
If the Falcons went 12-4, it would be Michael Vick who? With all the steroids talk baseball still set an all-time attendance record for the fourth year in a row. And if the Knicks somehow win 50 this year, MSG will be selling out again. Regardless of how they dealt with Browne Sanders.
Video clip here is from my CNBC colleague Lee Hawkins.
