ATLANTA -- A former NBA player is suing a popular Buckhead restaurant. Joe Barry Carroll said the Tavern at Phipps discriminated against him when it enforced a controversial practice the restaurant has in place.

"We feel that their behavior was inappropriate, it was illegal, it was a lot of things wrong," said Carroll.

Retired from the NBA for 18 years, Carroll said he does not miss the limelight nor the cameras. But he said what happened to him and his friend at a Buckhead restaurant cannot be ignored.

"I mean you'd have to be a person of color who has had to deal with indignity and disrespect to feel it fully," said Carroll.

Carroll said he and a friend were sitting at the bar enjoying a meal and drinks at the Tavern at Phipps in August 2006 when restaurant staffers asked them to give up their seats to a group of white women. They were asked and they declined several times. Management had an off-duty police officer escort the men out.

"We walked away shocked as the police escorted us out," said Carroll

Carroll recently filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the restaurant of racial and gender discrimination.

An attorney for the Tavern at Phipps said the restaurant has a long-standing practice of asking men to give up their seats to women if the bar is full.

"They do it consistently, they do it uniformly and they do it without regard to race," said attorney Bradley Adler. "Two other men of a different race were also asked to give up their seat, one being a white individual and the other being an Indian individual."

Carroll said, "But there were seats available at the bar as well as white men seated at the bar and when asked about those seats they said, 'Don't worry about those seats, we want yours and you've got to go.'"

Carroll said any money that may result from the lawsuit will be donated to charity.