MILWAUKEE – Latrell Sprewell, the newest Knick, wasn’t born with his hands wrapped around P.J. Carlesimo’s neck. He wasn’t always a lightning rod in a maelstrom of controversy; it just seems that way.
Many Americans never heard of Sprewell before he made national headlines Dec. 3, 1996, when he attacked his coach. But Sprewell’s life started long before that fateful day when he lost his cool and a year out of his NBA career.
His journey to fame and then infamy started here at Washington High School where his journey from truant to millionaire to pariah began. This is where he made a name for himself; the same name he’s now trying to clean up.
A purple and gold conference championship banner that he helped win still hangs from the gymnasium wall, a testament to the prodigal son.
And his friends and fans in this Milwaukee neighborhood are quick to defend the man, if not the action, quick to say one lapse of judgment shouldn’t outweigh a lifetime success story.
“They talk about how he’s this bad guy. What they should talk about is how he’s a junior college player who made it big,” said Dale Handford, who played with Sprewell at the Warning Summer League in the 29th St. Park.
“He didn’t grow up with much; he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He came up the hard way, and he made it. That’s what they should write about.”
Handford grew up playing with Sprewell in Milwaukee’s parks, like Lincoln Park, 29th St. Park or “The House,” as the locals call it, and Sherman Park, just two blocks from Washington High School. Now he and his friends are standing in the foyer at the school, in front of a burgeoning trophy case and talking about Spree.
“When I first heard of the [choking] incident, I said there’s two sides to every story. That’s not the kind of person he is,” said Calvin Rayford, who started with Sprewell on Washington’s 1987-88 team before going on to play at Kansas.
“He’s happy to be going to New York. He knows he’s coming in with baggage, and it’ll be tough in the beginning. We saw the trade go through on CNN, and that guy Vince on CNN said Sprewell had been traded, and before he said what he could do for the team, before he said anything about what kind of player he is, he said, ‘Sprewell, who attacked his coach.'”
And therein lies the rub. The player for whom the Knicks traded Chris Mills, Terry Cummings and John Starks, the man who once averaged 24.2 points for an NBA season and has three All-Star berths on his resume, is associated not with the shots he’s made on the court but the ones he delivered to Carlesimo’s neck. And those who know him claim that isn’t fair.
“There’s a thin line from being provoked, especially if you’re a person that has a certain pride that says you address me with some dignity,” said Washington coach Jim Gordon, peering over his wire-frame glasses and sleepily combing his gray-speckled beard.
“I was thinking the boy took it a bit too far, that was my reaction,” Gordon said with a rueful chuckle. “[But] the thing that’s unfair about society is that you’re not always remembered for what you did but you’re always remembered for the mistakes you made. Hopefully, we can get past that. At some points this season, he’ll stop being the guy who choked his coach.
“I compare him to Frank Sinatra. People don’t remember his troubles in Vegas, or that he beat up his girlfriend. He’s just Old Blue Eyes. Maybe by the middle of this season, Latrell will be Old Brown Eyes.”
Gordon taught Sprewell more than sociology and black history; he’s widely regarded as the man who turned Sprewell from a truant to a player. But he says Sprewell was just a good young man at heart who needed some direction.
Sprewell had grown up in Milwaukee and moved to Flint (Mich.) before returning to Milwaukee with his mother but had little in the way of financial means or discipline.
Gordon can remember the first time he saw Sprewell, a gangly, long-armed sometimes-student at Washington. Gordon was a teacher at the school and was to become the head basketball coach the next year. And he saw a bright kid whose potential was saddled with problems.
“I just saw him walking in the halls,” Gordon said. “I was coaching at Rufus King High School but I was teaching here. I saw the hands, the long arms, the wiry strong muscles. I asked him, ‘Do you like basketball?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘OK. I got a bad word on you. Let me see what you’re gonna do different. Show me you’re gonna be worth the time I work on you.’
“He had never played organized ball. He had a lot of raw potential, but he’s a quick learner. I’ve only coached three players like that; one is a doctor [Derrick Jones] the other is a city councilman [Willie Hines] and the third is Latrell.”
He was clearly worth the effort, and a quick-enough study to average 20.6 points for a 27-3 team that won the Milwaukee Area Conference as well as state Region and District titles. And, according to Gordon, he was a model citizen in that senior season once the carrot of basketball had been put in front of him.
“He got into a little trouble, not bad trouble. Just typical male ego being bigger than New York,” Gordon said. “He was a city boy, who had been exposed to city life. Curiosity got him the way it gets most kids.
“[But] when he decided to go for a goal, he realized the lifestyle has to fit the goals. He got a little direction.”
That direction took him with a recommendation from Gordon’s pal and Pistons assistant John Hammond to Three Rivers Community College in Pine Bluff, Mo. From there, he went on to Alabama. And if he never had a problem at Washington or Pine Bluff or with Alabama coach Wimp Sanderson and his notorious 6 a.m. practices, it can only beg the question; What’s happened to him since?
Every basketball fan knows about Sprewell’s problems with Carlesimo. They may have heard about how he hit Golden State teammate Byron Houston in the groin in 1993 and two seasons later how he came after teammate Jerome Kersey with a 2-by-4 and, after being restrained, threatened to come back with a gun.”
But they weren’t there to see the good Sprewell’s done, the Washingtonians say. They didn’t see the alum who comes back every summer to put on a basketball clinic, the man who goes to local youth detention centers to talk basketball and life to the inmates.
“He’s not a bad person,” said Hazel Wood, a security guard who also played with Sprewell at The House. “I was right up there on Hopkins St. once talking to him and this guy walked by from our old neighborhood.
“The guy wasn’t in too good shape; he was on drugs. And he turned to me and I looked in my pocket; nothing. He turned to Spree and he looked in his pocket and he didn’t have anything but a $100 bill.
‘So he gave it to him.”
Giving. Explosive. Big-hearted. At times violent. He’s as complex as he is unpredictable – something the Garden crowd is likely to find out soon enough.