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It may not top Dion Rayford’s mad Chalupa dash on the Dumbest Events in Sports This Year list, but it comes pretty damn close.

On Friday, Toronto Raptors head coach Butch Carter filed a $5 million defamation suit against former Raptor and current New York Knick Marcus Camby. The suit stems from an article in the Wednesday edition of the New York Daily News in which Camby called his former coach “a liar” and said that “No one likes him and no one wants to play for him. That's the kind of guy he is.”

In the lawsuit, filed in Camby’s home county of Westchester, Carter charges that Camby knew his statements were false and that he said them only to damage his professional reputation.

There have been plenty of laughable legal proceedings in the history of our judicial system, but this makes the McDonald’s coffee case look like the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Never mind that, legally, Carter has zero chance of winning this case. The fact is that his filing of the suit is an immature reaction to some slightly less immature trash-talking by Camby before the start of the Knicks-Raptors first-round playoff series.

Oh yeah, by the way, Vince Carter shot 3-for-20 in Game 1 and the Knicks are up 1-0 in the series. Just thought I should pass that along.

Come on, have we gotten to the point where athletes and/or coaches are going to call their lawyers every time they dis each other? For a generation that isn’t shy about speaking their mind when a microphones are in front of their faces, this is a heck of time to show their sensitive sides. Does this mean that Charles Barkley is going to sue Scottie Pippen for calling him a fat-ass on ESPN? Hey, maybe I can sue my junior high school soccer coach for saying I was too short to play goalkeeper.

Players and coaches ripping each other in the media is a fact of life in professional sports. That’s why no one really takes it seriously. Does Butch Carter really think that Marcus Camby calling him a liar is going to prevent him from getting another coaching job? If so, paranoia isn’t his only problem.

It’s obvious that he doesn’t, because on Sunday, Carter said that if Camby apologized, he would drop the suit. Real magnanimous of you, Butch. I bet Camby thought long and hard about that proposal.

Instead of worrying about his team’s performance against the Knicks, Carter has turned this playoff series into showdown between him and Camby to see who is the bigger man. And so far, Camby’s way out in front.
If the Knicks knock the Raptors out of the playoffs and Carter does lose his job, Marcus Camby will have played a part in it, not by calling him a liar, but for goading Carter into reacting like an infant and ignoring the reason he has his job in the first place: to lead the Raptors past the Knicks.

Keith Goldberg is the Sports Editor of the Washington Square News. He can be reached at 995-3346 or kdg201@nyu.edu.""