Adrian Griffin, the lead assistant coach with the NBA’s Toronto Raptors and a former Westchester resident, has sued his ex-wife for $5.5 million for allegedly trying to derail his dream of becoming a head coach in the basketball league.
Griffin accused Audrey R. Sterling of defamation, in an amended complaint filed Aug. 9 in U.S. District Court, White Plains.
Last year, the complaint states, Sterling accused Griffin in a Twitter post of physically abusing her and failing to pay child support.
“Sterling knew her accusations to be false,” the lawsuit states. “She made them anyway, and persisted in making them, using the now-common trope that athletes can get away with anything.”
Attempts to find contact information for Sterling, to get her side of the story, failed.
The couple owned a unit in the Scarborough Glen Condominium in Briarcliff Manor, from 2007 to 2012, according to Westchester property records.
They divorced in 2016. Now Griffin lives in Champaign, Illinois, and Sterling lives in Ossining.
Griffin, 47, played for several NBA teams for nine seasons and has worked as an assistant coach for several teams for the past 13 years.
He depicts himself as “an exceptional candidate for head coaching positions in the NBA.”
He depicts Sterling as obsessed with getting “her piece of the pie,” or alternately, undermining his career.
Last August, Griffin got a taste of his dream job when he filled in for the Raptors’ head coach in a game with the Philadelphia 76ers.
He “led his team to a dramatic comeback win from 16 points down,” the lawsuit states. And for one night, he told sports reporters after the victory, “I felt like Cinderella.”
The next day, Sterling issued a blistering tweet.
She implied that Griffin had told one of their four children to hate her. She accused him of not paying child support. She alluded to incidents in which he allegedly choked her, threw her into a wall, dragged her across a lawn when she was pregnant, and threw a ceramic vase at her. She implied that he sleeps with prostitutes and gave her a sexually transmitted disease.
How can someone get away with such abuses? she asked.
“I will tell you how. Just be in the NBA and win a game in the bubble. Cinderfella. That’s how.”
Griffin claims he never physically assaulted Sterling and that he overpaid child support by $110,000.
He said the abuse allegations were never mentioned during the divorce proceedings.
No NBA team has offered him a head coaching position, Griffin said, because of Sterling’s accusations. When he asked her to stop the “social media drama” for the sake of their children and his career, Sterling allegedly demanded $500,000 “to secure the peace.”
If not for the bad publicity, Griffin claims, he would have secured a head coaching job and millions of dollars in income.
Griffin is represented by Manhattan attorneys Andrew T. Miltenberg and Nicholas E. Lewis.
