FIRST-TIME caller, long-time listener. I’ve got two points to make about this Latrell Sprewell thing, then I’m going to hang up and let you guys kick it around.
1.) Starting Tuesday, with WFAN’s Mike Francesa and Chris Russo, I’ve heard and read that by procuring Sprewell, Garden boss Dave Checketts has betrayed his public vow never to allow the lower forms of NBA life to wear a Knick uniform. In Sprewell, it has been reported, Checketts severely compromised his own standards.
But that’s nonsense. The Knicks, under Checketts and throughout the ’90s, have been loaded with thugs. The Knicks of the ’90s have featured unrepentant thugs, recidivist thugs, thugs who arrived here as thugs and thugs who showed themselves to be thugs only after they became Knicks.
Greg Anthony, first-round draft pick, behaved like a street thug, even while on the bench in street clothes. Anthony Mason came to the Knicks as a suspected, night-crawling creep, then proved it. Charles Oakley was a tireless player, but he also played like a lout, which made him a tireless lout.
Larry Johnson is a full-time creep. As a Net, Chris Childs proved himself to be both a valuable player and a gentleman. Only after he joined the Knicks did he display his considerable thug repertoire – ill-timed technical fouls for incessant dissent, graphic throat-slashing demonstrations, et. al. And no one demanded that he stop.
Charlie Ward instigated a riot that led to the Knicks’ ejection from the playoffs, then declared that he was only doing God’s work. On the road, John Starks proudly saluted crowds with obscene gestures.
In Derek Harper, we were told that the Knicks had a mature, backcourt leader. But Harper, as a Knick, not only specialized in getting hit with self-indulgent technical fouls during playoff games, he was ejected from two of those games, once for fighting.
The Knicks’ first-round draft pick in 1996 was Syracuse’s John Wallace, who arrived with as much bad-boy baggage as he did basketball skills.
The Knicks, under Pat Riley, Jeff Van Gundy and their boss, Garden president Dave Checketts, are directly responsible for much of the NBA’s anti-thug legislation of the ’90s.
Once known as the world’s most urbane basketball audience, Garden crowds in ’90s increasingly began to show up as a blood-thirsty and profane mob.
That the Knicks of the ’90s have been lousy with miscreants certainly didn’t cause patrons to abandon the team or to cause a decrease in sellouts. Quite the contrary. The message Knick fans have long delivered to Checketts is that they’ll pay a fortune to cheer for anyone, as long as the team wins. Enter Latrell Sprewell.
The addition of Sprewell doesn’t represent a departure from team policy or the abandonment of personal social philosophy within Garden management. It represents a continuation of everything that has rendered sports unrecognizable as sport.
2) The wishful-thinking rationalization of many Knick fans – “everyone deserves a second chance” – is inapplicable garbage.
It’s worth noting that after the P.J. Carlesimo episode, when one would think that Sprewell would be as self-vigilant as possible, he twice more got into trouble, both times with the law.
Three weeks after he tried to strangle Carlesimo, he was cited for a curfew violation at a public park. That doesn’t sound like much, except that the park closed at 10 p.m., and Sprewell was found there at 4:02 a.m.
Six months later Sprewell pleaded no contest to a charge of reckless endangerment and was sentenced to three months’ house arrest. While speeding in a car, he caused an accident that injured two people. Talk about second chances, he’s lucky he’s not doing time for vehicular manslaughter.
Add these incidents to the fact that they occurred on the heels of the Carlesimo assault and we’re left with a guy who clearly just doesn’t get it.
We’ve heard, over and over, that Sprewell’s attack on Carlesimo was a case of a verbally abusive coach asking for it – even though Sprewell returned later on that day to attack Carlesimo a second time. But Carlesimo didn’t goad Sprewell to a closed park at 4:02 a.m. Carlesimo didn’t force Sprewell into a car to commit a criminal act of reckless endangerment.
Sprewell was a bad guy before the Carlesimo assault, during the Carlesimo assault and, most significantly, after the Carlesimo assault. In 1999, the New York Knicks, whose management and fans have invited and indulged some of the NBA’s worst acts and actors throughout the decade, is the perfect team for Latrell Sprewell. *ACQUIRING Dennis Rodman would likely be a tougher pill for Checketts to swallow than trading for Sprewell. Lest we forget, Rodman, a couple of years ago, directed some vile invective in the direction of Mormons, specifically those living in Utah. Checketts is from Utah and a Mormon, too. *KEYS To The Olympic Kingdom: The essence of the IOC under the leadership of His Excellency, Juan Antonio Samaranch, can be found in two stories that surfaced last week in Ostersund, Sweden.
According to Eric Nilsson, sports editor of Ostersund’s newspaper, when IOC officials were invited to tour the town as part of the selection process for the 2002 Winter Olympics, an IOC delegate was loaned a new Saab to survey the site. When the delegate finished, he balked at returning the keys. It was his clear, but unilateral understanding that he had been given the car.
Bjorn Folin, press director of the Swedish Olympic Committee, said he was nagged by another IOC official who strongly suggested that Ostersund’s bid would be given “favorable consideration” should he be presented with a new Volvo. *CBS’ post-game interview with Bill Parcells Sunday in Denver was presented as live, but it was on tape, having been recorded just minutes earlier. This is no big thing, except that it’s both dishonest and foolish. Had CBS taken the up front route and noted that it was recorded “moments ago,” not one viewer would’ve turned away. *IT’S ironic that Craig Janney this week became an Islander, a franchise so seriously affected by players lost to concussions (Brett Lindros, Pat LaFontaine, Dennis Vaske).
In November, while being interviewed on Scott Ferrall’s radio show – and trying to sound as street-hip as Ferrall – Janney ridiculed the NHL’s efforts to minimize the incidence of head injuries, a league-mandated sensitivity to what Janney called, “this multiple-concussion garbage.”
