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AJ McKenzie
  • 11 hours ago
He wasn't the problem
IG: aj_mckenzie416
Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
Transcript
00:05The
00:06Hamilchek steals it!
00:08Hamilchek stole the ball!
00:09Down goes Basia!
00:11Down goes Basia!
00:13Down goes Basia!
00:16United Trovici
00:17Hamilchek powers in
00:19The fourth win!
00:20The fourth win!
00:21The fourth win!
00:22The fourth win!
00:24The fourth win!
00:27That's a tough win!
00:29Won their sixth NBA championship!
00:32That's a swing!
00:33This has got to be an all-round
00:35Unbelievable!
00:37Don't believe what I just saw!
00:53Hello, I'm Chris Fowler, and welcome to SportsCentury.
00:57Latrell Sprewell doesn't play basketball.
00:59He attacks it.
01:00His drives are a chaotic blur of speed and muscle,
01:04and when his jump shots are falling,
01:06he's a team unto himself.
01:07But an anti-authoritarian temper
01:10that he has nurtured since childhood
01:11burned a hole in his reputation.
01:14In December of 1997,
01:16the flames of Sprewell's discontent with his coach
01:19erupted across the NBA horizon.
01:35In December of 1997,
01:36the Warriors' slogan was
01:38No More Mr. Nice Guys,
01:40and they had billboards around the Bay Area
01:42with Carlissimo and the assistant coaching staff
01:44wearing dark sunglasses.
01:46Well, the objective was, you had a coach previously
01:50that may have been more laid back.
01:52Now there was somebody that's going to come in
01:53a little different than that.
01:54P.J. was pretty much a yeller.
01:56He got in your face and let you know
01:58when something was wrong.
01:59He was like a yapping dog.
02:01And he needed a leash and a muzzle.
02:04And he was bothering everybody.
02:06I think everybody realized,
02:07this is just not going to work.
02:08I mean, they may have gone way too far
02:10in the other direction.
02:11These guys can't possibly coexist.
02:13You can't have a guy like Sprewell
02:14playing for a coach like Carlissimo.
02:16If P.J. Carlissimo was increasingly frustrated
02:19by the Warriors' lack of response
02:21to his aggressive coaching style,
02:23his scoring star, Latrell Sprewell,
02:25had already drawn public criticism
02:27for an off-the-court incident involving
02:29his four-year-old daughter
02:30three years earlier in 1994.
02:32Incredible.
02:33He had a pet pit bull,
02:34and it attacked his daughter.
02:37Bit off most of his years,
02:38he had to have just enormous amounts of surgery.
02:40And people quite naturally questioned him
02:42and said,
02:43well, you're going to get rid of that dog.
02:44And he said at the time,
02:46that he wasn't going to put the dog down.
02:48And when he said that,
02:50that raised a lot of eyebrows around Bay Area.
02:53People really got this feeling of him
02:55as a sort of cold-hearted monster
02:57as a result of that episode.
02:58On the court,
03:00Sprewell's...
03:00a cold-hearted monster for not killing a living creature.
03:04But for me,
03:05you touch my daughter,
03:07you have to...
03:08you have to go.
03:10But...
03:11you could have just sold it.
03:14Confrontational behavior resulted in two fights
03:17with bigger teammates during practice.
03:19First with Byron Houston in 1993,
03:21and then with Jerome Kersey two years later.
03:25It became apparent to Sprewell's teammates
03:27that he wanted to get to Jerome Kersey.
03:29And Sprewell went back and got,
03:32you know,
03:33the now-famous two-by-four
03:35because he wanted to get at Jerome Kersey.
03:37Clearly, you have a guy who played
03:39with a tremendous amount of passion,
03:40who had a tremendous temper,
03:43that when he felt someone was attacking him
03:47or his manhood was being challenged,
03:49he was going to come after you.
03:51In the fall of 1997,
03:54tension between Carlesimo and Sprewell increased.
03:57After being reprimanded for laughing in the huddle
04:00during a blowout loss,
04:01the player responded by calling his coach a joke.
04:04On November 28th,
04:06the three-time All-Star was fine
04:08after missing a team flight.
04:10There were things that we were doing on the court
04:12that I felt like we should do differently,
04:14and then, you know, tell PJ,
04:16and he just wouldn't change.
04:17And it's not that we were losing.
04:19We were losing by, like, 15 to 20 points every night.
04:22Spre and myself would get in talk every night
04:25and say, you know,
04:25how come PJ's not listening to us?
04:27And that was an ongoing problem,
04:29just probably from day one in training camp.
04:31You could see that it was escalating,
04:33getting more and more to the point
04:34where they just really, I think,
04:36just really didn't enjoy being around each other.
04:38I could count at least three or four times
04:40where we were going at each other in practice.
04:43You know, he'd say stuff to me, I'd say stuff back.
04:46And for me, this was all new.
04:47I've never had that with a coach.
04:50So to have this happening on a daily basis
04:52was definitely frustrating.
04:54There were incidents when PJ would take Luttrell out of a game
04:57where he'd go down and sit on the end of the bench,
04:59and you could see Luttrell mocking him
05:02and talking to other teammates about, you know,
05:05what a joke he thought this guy was.
05:06If he respects you, he'd get along with you.
05:11He didn't...
05:11Carlesimo.
05:13During practice on December 1st, 1997,
05:17Carlesimo sparked the emotional kindling
05:19that had been built for weeks inside his top player.
05:23Carlesimo was down at the far end of the court,
05:24and he wasn't happy with how hard Sprewell was going through this drill.
05:29And he said something to Sprewell.
05:31He was telling me he wasn't throwing passes hard enough.
05:34So it's embarrassing when a coach does that to you.
05:36At that point, Carlesimo began to walk the length of the court
05:40to approach Sprewell.
05:41And Sprewell basically told Carlesimo, you know, to get away from him.
05:47It was just a build-up of anger and frustration,
05:50just having it all bottled up and not being able to express myself.
05:54And at that point, it just came to a head.
05:57He just heard the ball slam, and the next thing you know,
05:59Sprewell housed PJ around his neck.
06:02Eventually pulled away by his teammates, Sprewell left the court.
06:06Twenty minutes later, he returned
06:08and launched a second attack on Carlesimo.
06:11Then the next thing you know, he leaves, and he comes back,
06:14and we're all gathered around, and Sprewell's just peed off
06:17and saying, you know, get me out of here, trade me, and didn't laugh.
06:21No one ever wrote how Bimbo wanted to come in here and talk to me.
06:24They prevented him from coming in here and talking to me.
06:27If they had let him do that,
06:29then it wouldn't have even been the little second time.
06:34I think that kind of cinched the public relations deal,
06:38that whatever happened there, PJ Carlesimo was going to be the victim.
06:45And one of the things that I was kind of disappointed in is that
06:48that happened in a practice setting, and nobody really had to know anything about it.
06:52When the doors opened at the end of the practice facility in Oakland,
06:57with Charles Sprewell's conspicuously absent,
07:00PJ gathered the writers around to give them his usual daily post-practice comments,
07:05except that he had huge marks right along the sides of his neck like this.
07:15We're dealing with anger management and people skills and interaction of people.
07:20Yeah.
07:20Was there surprise on everybody's part?
07:23When things happen like that, yes, because that's way the heck out of the norm in our business.
07:27We had an incident today, multiple incidents today in our practice.
07:36We practiced and he didn't, and the words kind of escalated to some physical contact.
07:44It's a very volatile, emotional game.
07:46But, you know, you can never lose your composure.
07:48I mean, as a coach, you can never put your hands on a player.
07:50As a player, you can never put your hands on a coach.
07:53What Latrell Sprewell did to PJ Carlesimo was a crime in any setting.
07:59That is an assault. That is a battery.
08:02When you come back the second time, it's an aggravated battery.
08:07There's obvious intent to harm the coach.
08:11For his double assault, Sprewell paid twice.
08:15First, the remaining $23.7 million in his contract with the Warriors was terminated.
08:21Then, NBA commissioner David Stern leveled him with the longest non-drug related suspension in history.
08:27One year without pay.
08:29I think because there had never been anything exactly like this that had happened before,
08:35that the commissioner, you know, was really breaking new ground as to, you know, what the penalty would be.
08:41Michael Jordan was less than a few months from retiring from the game.
08:46And there was this great concern in the NBA.
08:48Who's going to carry the torch?
08:50And David Stern made sure it wasn't going to be Latrell Sprewell.
08:55That was one of his roughest times.
08:57He watched some of the Golden State games.
08:59You could see it in him though.
09:00You could see that, wow, I got treated unfairly.
09:02You could see it just in his face like, you know, I shouldn't, I should still be playing right now.
09:07You know, it was just, it wasn't my fault.
09:10It was the most difficult thing that I've had to deal with in my life.
09:14And I don't really think a lot of people would have held up under that much pressure.
09:21I understand that there are many fans that feel that I let them down.
09:26I want to say to them, I'm sorry.
09:28Again, I want to apologize to my teammates because I have made a lot of friends here.
09:34And the Bay Area has been great to me.
09:36However much he regretted his actions, Sprewell filed a grievance through the Players Union, hiring legal gun Johnny Cochran as
09:44his consultant.
09:45As he pressed his case against Golden State, a human face began to emerge from behind the national bad boy
09:52image.
09:53It took the form of a troubled child in Milwaukee.
09:57Latrell grew up in a place where there wasn't a lot of money.
10:01His father and mother had these physical confrontations where, you know, the police had to be called.
10:06With his father grand sacking the house, he's turning over chairs, he's breaking mirrors, he's putting his fist through who
10:11knows what.
10:13Takes the car and then loads it with all of her possessions and drives off.
10:18Such is the state of their marriage that she decides to press charges and that results in one of his
10:23several jail terms.
10:25Our mother and father didn't get along that well.
10:29It was kind of rough for us at times.
10:31We came from somewhere that was really kind of torn up.
10:35His parents split up when he was a young boy.
10:38An abusive father was pretty much the cause of the split.
10:42The man that Latrell Sprewell's mother hooked up with after the divorce was physically abusive.
10:48Now that there's a new man in Latrell's world, a mother's boyfriend.
10:52So a guy, your real father is an abusive criminal and your second father is also abusive.
11:04Well, why do we blame Latrell Sprewell for turning out how he turned out?
11:18I was happy with my mom's boyfriend at the time, you know, so I thought it would be better for
11:25me to just go live with my dad.
11:33After moving in with his father, Latosca Fields, six years later, Latrell's life was disrupted again.
11:41Fields, a small-time marijuana dealer, was sentenced to two years for illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun.
11:49Seeing family members, you know, in and out of jail was something that, unfortunately, that I had to deal with
11:54as a child when coming up.
11:56But when it's one of your parents, it is tougher.
11:58We even visited our father when he was locked up. You know, the emotions came out.
12:03We was definitely hurt by the time that he had to spin in there.
12:07That was time lost from us that we couldn't be with him.
12:10It really hurt to see his father caged like an animal.
12:14He thinks he held in way too much over the years.
12:17That there was some hostility and some anger unresolved that may have led him to have the incident with P
12:24.J. Kerlissom.
12:25I think he held a lot of stuff in that he wanted to get out.
12:31You know, and I think that was a lot of him holding a lot of frustrations in about a lot
12:36of things that happened in the family.
12:40We actually have a basketball court. We made a court in like an alley back home.
12:46And I could tell that he had the skills in him already because I was a lot bigger than him.
12:50He could do things and get around me and everything.
12:55Despite averaging 28 points, Sprewell was not offered a college scholarship.
13:03After refining his game at Three Rivers Junior College in Missouri, Sprewell transferred to Alabama in 1990 and made all
13:13Southeastern Conference as a senior.
13:15He was an extraordinary athlete and a very good defender and you could see potential in him.
13:22But was it the...
13:25From the University of Alabama.
13:26From the University of Alabama.
13:31Is this a joke?
13:33There is no look Charles Sprewell.
13:39Are you serious?
13:41He couldn't figure out who he was.
13:44He comes in the can...
13:49He's Superman.
13:50This is like striking gold.
13:53Yep.
13:57So now...
14:00Sprewell guards me as well as anybody.
14:02He was lightning quick.
14:03My coach used to put him in a game and says, shut him down.
14:07Catch the ball.
14:17Freewell lit up the league, averaging 20 points and playing hard-nosed defense.
14:21But, after his attack on P.J. Carlissimo, his future in the NBA was uncertain.
14:28I think everyone thought, well this is going to be the end of the Charles Sprewell's career because no one
14:31can imagine anything worse happening to a player.
14:34Attack.
14:34I'd just like to point out that he won no playoffs appearance with the Warriors.
14:40In six years.
14:43He leaves, has three conference championship appearances, and a finals appearance the next six years.
14:51So he wasn't the problem.
15:08Backing the coach and getting kicked out of the league.
15:14Backing the coach and getting kicked out of the league.
15:16Almost counterculture.
15:19So, what had a man who wouldn't obey his coach was also, all of a sudden had turned himself into
15:28an individualist who was interesting.
15:30If there's any city that gives you a second chance, that's New York.
15:35And give you it because they just happen to be charitable.
15:39If you perform for their team, then you're gold and all is forgotten.
15:46After Latrell Sprewell's suspension, which had been reduced through arbitration to 68 games,
15:51he met with Nick's management in January of 1999.
15:54They drilled me with questions.
15:57But I felt like when they left, they had a good sense of what time.
16:02What I was most impressed about with Latrell during that meeting was that he didn't try to make excuses and
16:08or alibi.
16:09He said he was wrong for the incident with PJ.
16:13And he was ready to move forward and resume his career.
16:17After being traded to the Knicks for John Starks and two other players, Sprewell still had to prove his value
16:24to a skeptical public.
16:26I think he was still a plague.
16:28I think people didn't want to touch him.
16:30I think the feeling was, oh boy, when is he going to snap?
16:32When is he going to do something crazy?
16:34When he came to New York, he was this guy that was supposed to be a bad guy,
16:38but came in with a lot of fanfare.
16:40And the crowd took time because of his energy in the way, how he played.
16:49Spree saw the machinery at work, and he saw what a hit he took, not saying anything.
17:02And being quiet, and how that put everybody on PJ's side in that incident,
17:10and left him as this silent bad guy.
17:16He's always in the locker room to talk to the press.
17:19He is always there to explain.
17:26The family decided to let their son wear the number 8 jersey.
17:29The middle of that first season in New York.
17:38All the kids were wearing the Sprewell jerseys.
17:45Hmm.
17:49As far as basketball goes, he really presents what you want, you know.
17:53Broussard.
17:57In the court, he's all out war.
18:01He takes stereo equipment, VCRs apart, and then puts them back together.
18:05You know, the guy was a social work major in college, which a lot of people don't realize.
18:09There's a Luttrell Sprewell outside of basketball.
18:11He just chooses not to let people know that.
18:14A few years ago, at a charity, I purchased the Nick's Ball Boy, Ball Girl for a day for my
18:20daughter.
18:22And Sprewell was the Nick assigned to the ball kid of the day.
18:27The way he treated my daughter made me think that perhaps all those bad things that Spree used to do
18:35were an act.
18:35And that this was the genuine Spree.
18:39Playing under control as the Nick's sixth man, Sprewell averaged 16 points as New York reached the 1999 NBA Finals.
18:55Although the overachievers lost to the Spurs in five games, Sprewell had gotten what he always craved, respect.
19:03That was, I guess his coming out party.
19:05He's been waiting since he got here to shine and he finally got his opportunity and he took full advantage
19:11of it.
19:12Here's Sprewell!
19:14Yeah!
19:14Oh, oh!
19:15Slam it down with a tomahawk!
19:17I'll find him.
19:18Sprewell is like lightning!
19:21He did it with his energy and his skill and his personality.
19:25And the team loved him.
19:27Marcus Camby and those guys were saying,
19:29He's our leader.
19:30Imagine that.
19:31Now he's their leader.
19:33Unbelievable.
19:38Before a game...
19:45In 2001, away from the cameras, Latrell Sprewell shook hands with P.J. Carlissimo.
19:52Four years earlier, that same hand had been around his former coach's throat.
19:57It took me a while to even be able to say anything to P.J.
20:00I mean, honestly, after everything that I had been through and everything that I had to go through myself and
20:05my family, it was...
20:06It was...
20:12If one nasty chapter in his career had ended, Sprewell was beginning another.
20:17After Jeff Van Gundy resigned as coach earlier that December, Sprewell's relationship with Nick's management deteriorated.
20:24Jeff was a guy who believed that you do treat your star players like star players and you don't have
20:30to treat them all the same.
20:31And that's sort of how he'd been treated the last, you know, the first couple of years he was here.
20:36And the rules changed on him.
20:37Latrell Sprewell will say what he wants, will play the way he wants, will do what he wants, because that's
20:44who he is.
20:45That's not a bad thing as long as the Knicks are winning.
20:48But when that team falls apart and he starts pointing fingers, then all of a sudden he's not the best
20:54guy in the world again.
20:55He carried the squad on his back. And what did the Knicks do right after that? They signed Allen Houston
21:00to a $99 million contract.
21:02And I think that's where it all went wrong. I mean, for Latrell, when he was like, you know what?
21:07Come on now. I have proven on this court that I'm your $100 million man. When it comes to crunch
21:12time, I'm your fourth quarter.
21:14That's what he was like, you know what? I'm done.
21:19When Sprewell missed a pregame shoot around in April of 2002, Knicks chairman James Dolan suspended him for one game.
21:27That fall, Sprewell arrived at training camp with a broken hand.
21:31Thinking he wasn't aware of the fracture, he said he had hurt it two weeks earlier on his yacht.
21:37Dolan fined him $250,000 and barred him from the team until the injury healed.
21:42If I had known it was broken, I mean, I would have gotten it, at least gotten the calves put
21:48on it.
21:48You can find me, but I keep me away from the team. That's really not, I didn't feel like that
21:53that was necessary.
21:54I didn't feel like that that really helped the team.
21:57He's also a guy that won't be bullied though. And I think that's what you see reflecting in this sort
22:02of spat between Knicks management and Latrell Sprewell.
22:06Why does this stuff always happen to the same guy? You have to ask a question.
22:10It can't be total coincidence that these things all seem to happen to Latrell Sprewell.
22:16After more than a year on the trading block, Sprewell was dealt to Minnesota in July of 2003.
22:22With five seasons in New York under his belt, the 33-year-old swingman with the double-edged reputation took
22:28his game to the Midwest.
22:29I am conscious and I do care about my image, but I don't really care about negative things that I
22:36hear because I know I can't change everyone.
22:40And I have a better understanding of how things work and why it is what it is now and why
22:45it was what it was five years ago.
22:46So, you know, I'm just trying to do everything I can to make sure that, you know, it's where I
22:52want it to be.
22:53In their subconscious, when they see him, when you hear the name Latrell Sprewell, I'm sure people are going to
23:00instantly think of that incident.
23:03That's something that you can't get around, like a scar that's there.
23:07The thing is that this sucks the most is Sprewell, I think, is a good kid who's a terrific player.
23:15And he's going to be scarred for that forever.
23:18What he's done so far is he's enabled people to say it's not going to be the only thing they
23:24remember about Latrell Sprewell.
23:26And I think ultimately that's about the most he can hope for.
23:29He's the classic enigma. I don't think anyone has a handle on who Latrell Sprewell is other than Latrell Sprewell.
23:36I think he's, you know, has a holographic quality that depending on who's looking at him, they may see something
23:40different.
23:44When he was bad, he was very, very bad. And Latrell Sprewell paid the price.
23:49But when he was good, he was rewarded.
23:51Even when his lawsuit to regain the $6.4 million he lost when he was suspended without pay in 1997
23:58-98 was still pending,
24:00Commissioner David Stern allowed him to appear in the NDA's commercials during 2000.
24:05In a league where image is emphasized, Sprewell has walked a crooked path between shadow and light.
24:12For SportsCentury, I'm Chris Fowler.
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