Sam Smith: Sprewell's Attack = Root Of NBA Strife

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   Published on December 5, 1998                          
                                                          
   Sprewell's attack on Carlesimo the root of NBA's strife  to a friend

   By Sam Smith
   CHICAGO TRIBUNE
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------

   CHICAGO -- One of the most significant anniversaries in NBA history
   passed relatively unnoticed Tuesday.

   Not the day Dennis Rodman sat for his first tattoo. This was a mark
   less permanent but with more lasting effect.

   It was a year ago Tuesday that Latrell Sprewell assaulted his coach,
   the Warriors' P.J. Carlesimo, by choking him during practice.

   While that's not the sole reason the NBA isn't playing today, the
   lockout that has resulted in the cancellation of the first two months
   of the season can be traced, in large part, to the Sprewell incident.

   More than any single event in recent years, it crystallized for the
   owners the extent of the problems in the NBA, and that something had
   to be done immediately.

   League officials and the players union started negotiating again
   Thursday in hopes of resolving the long dispute.

   But there's no disputing that Dec. 1, 1997, is when it became clear
   the NBA needed straightening out, and if a season had to be missed in
   the process, so be it.

   On the surface, the lockout appears to be about greed and money --
   who gets more of a ridiculously huge pot of sporting gold.

   The particulars are about percentages of gross revenues and escrow
   accounts and exceptions to the rules.

   But the issue is a loss of control and sanity, both personal and
   economic.

   There's no question the NBA is gripped by economic madness.

   Kevin Garnett turns down a six-year, $103.5 million contract offer
   from Minnesota and calls it an insult. And then he gets more.

   Rasheed Wallace signs with Portland for more than $80 million over
   six years and isn't even one of the top three players on his team.

   Whose fault is it? The owners for paying it? The players for
   demanding it?

   That's the sticking-out-your-tongue portion of this debate between
   players and management.

   And it might have gone on if not for Sprewell.

   With a subsequent arbitrator's ruling reinstating Sprewell's salary,
   it became clear to every owner in the NBA that their hold on the game
   was gone, that they were part of the madness.

   They couldn't even dock a guy's pay, let alone fire him, for
   assaulting his boss.

   Enough was enough. Certainly most NBA players are good, decent
   people. But there was Chris Webber being arrested on the way to
   practice, allegedly with marijuana in his car; Allen Iverson or some
   friend under arrest seemingly almost weekly; Shawn Kemp walking out
   on his team amid reports of heavy drinking and demanding a $100
   million contract.

   Still, it might have gone on relatively unchecked because everyone
   was still making money. Michael Jordan still was milking the cash
   cow, and there was excitement.

   But a December afternoon last year changed it all.

   Sprewell, with his $8 million annual contract, had his team at 1-13,
   and Carlesimo was lecturing in his shrill way about crisper passing.

   Sprewell went berserk, charging Carlesimo and grabbing him by the
   throat. He was pulled off but returned about 20 minutes later to try
   again.

   Two days later the Warriors terminated Sprewell's contract and the
   league suspended him for a year. Three months later arbitrator John
   Feerick ruled Sprewell's contract could not be terminated and ordered
   him reinstated to play the next season.

   Sprewell sued the league and the Warriors, claiming he shouldn't even
   have been punished that much. Then he fired his agent and sued him
   for malpractice.

   It was a huge wakeup call for the NBA. A bulb the size of the sun
   went on over the owners' heads. An alarm clock the size of Big Ben
   went off.

   Ownership and management had lost control of the league they had
   built from almost nothing in the past 20 years.

   They were paying gangsters with posses almost the entire worth of
   their franchises.

   Not all the players but the Sprewells of the world who, it seemed,
   could do or say just about anything and get away with it: demand
   trades, not report when traded, hold out as long as they wanted, fake
   injuries and quit on the team to ensure their next contract, reject
   contracts that could support entire countries for a year, physically
   assault members of management.

   And then escape punishment.

   The Sprewell incident and the sequence of events it triggered has
   unified and strengthened ownership like never before.

   Which is why the union's theory that TV would force the NBA to settle
   is nonsense.

   Nothing is going to move management until it regains some control,
   including financial control, of a league that has been spiraling away
   from it. No one really noticed because of the circus going on in
   Chicago with the Bulls.

   But it became as clear as the scratch marks on Carlesimo's throat
   that the NBA was being strangled by greed, selfishness and a lack of
   ethics and morality.

   It all coalesced in the person of Latrell Sprewell. And like
   Sprewell, we all still await the fallout from his actions.

   Edition: SRVT,  Section: B,  Page: 9


                         © 1998 Contra Costa Times