The Knicks kept tinkering with their roster two days before training camp, acquiring the draft rights to Jared Jordan on Sunday and working toward a buyout of Dan Dickau's contract.

The Knicks traded cash considerations to the Los Angeles Clippers in a deal that sends last season's NCAA assists leader back to New York. The Clippers took Jordan with the 45th pick in the NBA draft.

Jordan could compete for a backup point guard spot that will become open once the Knicks have completed their buyout of Dickau, who was acquired from Portland in the Zach Randolph trade in June. Dickau isn't expected to be in camp when it opens Tuesday in Charleston, S.C.

The New York Knicks have rather high goals set in place for the upcoming season.

"Our goal isn't to make the playoffs anymore," center Eddy Curry said. "Because I think that should be a given with the talent we have and the coaching we have. I would love to come out of the East."

Those are Curry's first remarks of the offseason during which he was robbed at gunpoint in his suburban Chicago home in July, bolted the Windy City and laid low in Westchester. Curry made the bold statement in a Knicks promotional video, dubbed "The Knick Experience."

"Our team, on paper, is a championship team," Stephon Marbury added recently. "How far can we go? It's going to be decided on us."

A jury asked for hundreds of pages of testimony and documents before finishing its first full day of deliberations Friday in the sexual harassment case brought by a former top New York Knicks executive against coach Isiah Thomas.

The jury asked for transcripts of testimony of four men, including Thomas, along with e-mails sent by the plaintiff, Anucha Browne Sanders, to the president of Madison Square Garden, which is a defendant as well in the three-week-old trial.

The jury in Anucha Browne Sanders?s lawsuit against Knicks Coach Isiah Thomas and Madison Square Garden deliberated for seven and a half hours yesterday, asked repeatedly for clarification and hundreds of pages of testimony, but did not reach a verdict.

The jurors will return Monday to the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan to resume deliberations.

The length of the deliberations, as well as some of the questions the jurors asked and the evidence they requested, seemed to raise the hopes of Browne Sanders and her legal team. None of the lawyers, however, would comment after United States District Court Judge Gerard E. Lynch sent the jury home at 5 p.m.

The ankle injury that will keep Renaldo Balkman out all of training camp and possibly the first two weeks of the regular season has opened the door for the Knicks to bring Allan Houston to Charleston, S.C., for a tryout, according to sources.

Despite having 17 contracts, two over the limit, the Knicks have become a leading candidate to land Houston, as they believe they owe the 36-year-old a crack at making the team. The Knicks, a weak outside shooting club last season, appear willing to give Houston guaranteed money to report to training camp. No contract has been signed, according to a source.

The Nets have offered a non-guaranteed contract to Houston, but Nets president Rod Thorn said yesterday he has heard the Knicks have offered Houston guaranteed money. Should Houston get a guaranteed deal, the Nets likely would be out of the running.

New York Knickerbockers President of Basketball Operations and Head Coach Isiah Thomas announced today that forward Renaldo Balkman has a stress reaction and a small cartilage injury in his right ankle confirmed by an MRI. The second-year Staten Island-native will be fitted for a walking boot and will be re-evaluated in four weeks.

In 68 games as a rookie last season, Balkman, 6-8, 208-pounds, averaged 4.9 points, 4.3 rebounds  over 15.6 minutes. Among NBA rookies last season, he ranked eighth in rebounding and sixth in steals per game (0.84).

?We performed an MRI that located a stress reaction and injured cartilage,? Director of Player Care, Dr. Lisa Callahan said. ?We will re-evaluate the healing process after four weeks of rest to decide how much longer it will take for Renaldo to be back on the court.?

In his second day on the witness stand at a trial in federal court in Manhattan, Isiah Thomas denied allegations in a $10 million lawsuit that he repeatedly addressed the plaintiff, Anucha Browne Sanders, as "bitch" and a "ho" while they worked together at Madison Square Garden.

Degrading a woman that way "is never OK," he told the jury of five women and three men. "It is never appropriate."

Thomas added, "I've never cursed at Anucha. I've cursed around Anucha."

He also calmly downplayed a videotaped deposition in which he suggested he would be more troubled hearing a white man calling a black woman a "bitch" than if a black man said the same thing.

"It's very offensive for any man -- black, white, purple -- to call a woman a bitch," he said under questioning by one of his lawyers.

The chairman of Madison Square Garden testified Tuesday that he fired one of his top executives after learning that she tried to get her subordinates to help build a sexual harassment case against New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas.

James Dolan told a jury in U.S. District Court that another company executive told him that MSG vice president Anucha Browne Sanders tampered with an internal investigation of her discrimination claims by meeting with her employees and trying to persuade them to support her.

He said he was also told before the January 2006 firing that she was demanding $6 million not to lodge a harassment complaint.

A Madison Square Garden employee testified Monday that she had consensual sex with Knicks guard Stephon Marbury, contradicting earlier claims by a former executive suing the organization for sexual discrimination.

Kathleen Decker took the witness stand in a Manhattan courtroom to try to settle for a jury what happened the night of her birthday in 2005 when she met Marbury at a strip club and got into the star's truck.

She said she was not intoxicated when she left the club in Mount Vernon, N.Y., intending to get a ride home with Marbury's cousin. Instead, she encountered Marbury sitting in his truck calling out to her.

"Stephon Marbury asked me: 'Are you going to get in the truck?' and I got in the truck," she told the jury. Asked if the sex was consensual, she answered, "Completely ... I was in control."

One lawyer asked her if Marbury raped her. "Never," she responded.

The testimony came after fired MSG VP Anucha Browne Sanders testified as part of her sexual harassment case that Decker told her she felt no choice but to submit to Marbury's advances.

A Madison Square Garden executive who says New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas showered her with profanities was unsparing in her own foul language to describe fellow executives, a former colleague testified Monday.

John Cudmore, a senior vice president of finance, told a federal jury that the executive, Anucha Browne Sanders, on numerous occasions had referred to others with the f-word and even "bitch," a word she says Thomas frequently hurled at her.

Cudmore was called as a witness by the defense as the Manhattan trial entered its third week.