Another day, another embarrassment.

There was a court involved, the Knicks lost, and Isiah Thomas cried foul afterward — nothing new there. What was new and different, however, was the extent to which yesterday’s ruling in the Anucha Browne Sanders case leaves a black eye on the franchise. The four-man, three-woman jury ruled that the Knicks owed $11.6 million in punitive damages for creating a hostile working environment, $3 million of which is owed by Knicks’ owner James Dolan himself and the rest by Madison Square Garden. While I doubt that ruling will hurt Dolan or MSG much financially — it’s less than what they paid Jalen Rose to not play basketball last season — it’s a huge defeat for Dolan personally since he’d avoided settling the case in an effort to prove his innocence.

The only partial victory for the team came when the jury couldn’t decide on punitive damages to be paid by Thomas and declared a mistrial on that front. However, the jurors still must decide on compensatory damages to be paid by Thomas and the team.

“I am innocent. I’m very innocent. I did not do the things that she accused me in the courtroom of doing,” Thomas said. “I am extremely disappointed that the jury did not see the facts in this case. I will appeal this.”

The Knicks also said they’d appeal, and Browne Sanders won’t see a single cent of this judgment until those processes are completed.

In the meantime, the ruling changes nothing in some ways … and everything in others.

It changes nothing in the sense that tomorrow will be business as usual at MSG. Thomas flew down to Charleston, S.C., for the Knicks’ training camp and will start working the phones to see if he can trade more unprotected lottery picks. Dolan will go back to doing whatever it is he does when he’s not alienating his team’s fan base. And Browne Sanders, the former Knicks executive whose February 2006 firing the jury found was retaliatory, will go back to her job in Buffalo.

And despite the dreams of Knicks fans, Dolan won’t be firing Isiah over this, either. For whatever reason, the smooth-talking Thomas appears to have his boss completely hoodwinked, even earning a contract extension last season while the team was seven games under .500 with the league’s highest payroll.

Don’t expect any discipline to come down from the league against Thomas or Dolan, either. While commissioner David Stern can have a heavy hand when players and coaches are found guilty of criminal misconduct, the league tends to lay off in civil cases such as this one because the standard of proof in those cases is much lower.

But despite the business-as-usual veneer, this case changes everything. In the big picture sense, this could be the point where things really start to turn ugly.

Consider the fans first. The Knicks haven’t felt many repercussions yet from the Thomas-Dolan traveshamockery, but that doesn’t mean they won’t in the near future. Not after Thomas allegedly said, “I don’t give a f— about those white people” in reference to the team’s season ticket holders.

Not after we learned that the increasingly loopy-behaving Stephon Marbury has free run of the place — to the point the team went out of its way to hire his loser cousins and an intern who had sex with him in the back of a truck earned a promotion for her efforts.

And not after a guilty verdict by the jury, one which adds far more legitimacy to Browne Sanders’s complaints, while only making the Knicks appear petty and vindictive — a description with which long-time Dolan watchers are intimately familiar.

Consider, also, that this isn’t Dolan’s last time defending a harassment suit: A Rangers cheerleader named Courtney Price has also filed suit against the Garden. Maybe after this defeat he’ll at least have the brains to settle.

As a result, the impact on the fan base could be severe. Trust me, I know where I’m coming from on this — I lived in Portland in the late 90s and saw first-hand how a franchise’s aloof and often illegal behavior turned a once-loyal fan base against the team. The Knicks aren’t going about it in quite the same way, but the outcome can be just as damaging — especially since New Yorkers have far more options for their entertainment dollar than folks in the Rose City. At this point, it appears only one man can save the franchise: David Stern.

No, the NBA commissioner won’t try to force Dolan out, nor can he. Besides, the other owners love having the Knicks around the same way you love that fool who comes in last every year in your fantasy-football league. The Knicks don’t win games, but pay a ton in luxury tax, and that money fills the coffers of the other 29 teams.

But at some point, the damage Dolan does to one of the league’s flagship franchises has to force the commish into action. He’s reaching dangerous territory now, flirting with the likes of Ted Stepien, Glen Taylor, and Donald Sterling as one of the worst owners in league history.

The NBA can survive that type of mismanagement in Cleveland or Minnesota — but it’s tougher to get over that in New York. This is the nation’s biggest market and, as much as Stern argues the contrary, it’s absolutely in the league’s best interests to have a strong team here.

Thus, the time has come for Stern to step in, and I’m dismayed that the NBA is treating the guilty verdict with such kid gloves. Maybe this is just the league’s public reaction and behind closed doors Stern is giving Dolan repeated lashings with a wet noodle, but it was an odd stance for a league that’s become increasingly intolerant of off-court misbehavior by its players.

Besides, haven’t the embarrassments gone on long enough? When Dolan was merely harming his own franchise it wasn’t so bad, but now his incompetence is doing league-wide damage.

As a result, on a day we should be talking about Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry, we’re instead talking about the latest black eye for Thomas, Dolan, and the Knicks. At this point, all we can do is wonder if and when Stern might step in and use his considerable arm-twisting prowess to help get this franchise back on the right track. Clearly the men in charge can’t do it on their own.