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The New York Knicks have beefed up their video analytics team amid a lawsuit against its former director Ike Azotam.
They have added former Milwaukee Bucks video and player development assistant Carson Shanks to their team of assistant video coordinators, Heavy Sports learned on Thursday.
Shanks also served last season as an assistant coach for the Wisconsin Herd, the Bucks’ G-League affiliate.
Shanks will join Reggie Cameron, Everett Dayton and Corey Sherman as the Knicks’ assistant video coordinators for next season.
Shanks is the Knicks’ second hire from the Bucks video analytics team since Gabe Snider in 2020. Snider has since left the organization and joined former Knicks assistant coach Kenny Payne at Louisville as their director of video analytics.
Before joining the Bucks in 2021, Shanks worked as an assistant coach at the University of Minnesota Duluth after serving as the video coordinator for the University of North Dakota.
Shanks, who hails from Apple Valley, Minnesota, played for one season with the Loyola Ramblers that went to the NCAA Final Four in 2018. He spent his first three college seasons at North Dakota before transferring to Loyola. He finished his collegiate career averaging 4.9 points and 2.6 rebounds in 13.6 minutes.
Shanks briefly played overseas before venturing into coaching and video analytics.
Knicks File Lawsuit vs. Ex-Employee, Raptors
On Monday, the Knicks filed a lawsuit against Azotam and his new employer, the Toronto Raptors, and several members of their organization including new head coach Darko Rajaković, claiming that they stole proprietary information, a team spokesperson told Heavy Sports.
“The New York Knicks have sued the Toronto Raptors and several members of their organization, including a former Knicks employee, after the former employee illegally took thousands of proprietary files with him to his new position with the Toronto Raptors,” a spokesperson for Madison Square Garden Sports said in a statement obtained by Heavy Sports via email.
“These files include confidential information such as play frequency reports, a prep book for the 2022-23 season, video scouting files and materials and more. Given the clear violation of our employment agreement, criminal and civil law, we were left no choice but to take this action,” the statement continued.
According to the lawsuit, the Knicks uncovered the security breach on August 15, one day after Azotam officially ended his tenure with the team.
ESPN Predicts Knicks to Win 46 Games Next Season
The Knicks are expected to finish sixth in the Eastern Conference next season with a 46-36 record, according to ESPN’s 2023-24 NBA season predictions.
The projection is a slight drop from their 47-win record last season that culminated with their first second-round appearance in the NBA playoffs over the last 10 years.
Their decision to run it back with a minor tweak — replacing Obi Toppin with Donte DiVincenzo in their projected rotation — is not enough for ESPN’s panel of experts to rank them above the Cleveland Cavaliers, who they handily beat in the first round of the playoffs last season.
The Cavaliers have beefed up their team, adding veterans Max Strus, Georges Niang and center Damian Jones to address their shooting woes and lack of physicality that was exposed in their first-round loss to the Knicks.
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