Keith Glass

NBA agent Keith Glass of Rumson has settled liigation dating back five years to his time as the coach of the Rumson-Fair Haven regional boy’s basketball team, according to an Associated Press report in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

According to the AP, the litigation began when Glass “engaged in a verbal dispute with one of his players during a game in February 2003.”

The dispute continued after the game and the player eventually was escorted from the team’s locker room, though there was no physical contact, according to Fred Klatsky, an attorney representing Glass.

The player’s mother, Nancy Davis, later signed a criminal complaint against Glass that charged him with harassment and assault. However, a grand jury declined to indict Glass on those charges, and Davis eventually sued Glass in civil court. That suit was dismissed last December, and a trial was scheduled for last week to consider Glass’ countersuit against the mother and son for defamation and malicious prosecution.

Instead, the sides agree to a settlement, the terms of which were reached last week but were not disclosed.

But columnist Bill Handleman of the Asbury Park Press said twice in a recent column that Glass “accepted the financial settlement he was awarded,” suggesting that Glass was on the winning side.

Here’s how Handleman laid out the background of the case last week:

Five years ago, the mother of a kid who played for him at Rumson Fair-Haven started something. She tried to get Glass fired. She brought criminal charges against him. She even had him in front of a grand jury.

How did this all come about? Simple: The kid challenged the coach’s authority during a game, said something disrespectful. In the heat of the moment, the coach told the kid that if he ever said anything like that to him again, he would stick his foot up his you know what.

Naturally, his expression was more colorful than that. His language was the language of the locker room. It was the language of Al McGuire, the language of Vince Lombardi, the language all coaches use at one time or another.

Never having been in a locker room, the kid’s mother tried to make a federal case out of this incident. It was as convenient an excuse as any. The kid wanted to play more, and the mother wanted to remove his coach, the obstacle.

Soon, someone would write a letter to the Asbury Park Press, saying that Glass had threatened to sodomize the kid, based on this one remark.

“I was shocked that the paper would print that letter,” he says now.

The AP reported that an attorney representing Davis did not immediately return a phone message Monday, and a number could not be found for Davis.

Glass has an office in downtown Red Bank. He represents Jackie Butler of the Houston Rockets and Royal Ivey of the Milwaukee Bucks. He has represented former NBA players including Mark Eaton, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and current Sacramento Kings player Quincy Douby.

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