| | OAKLAND, Calif. -- The anger and bitterness from Latrell
Sprewell's last meeting with P.J. Carlesimo surfaced again two
years later. And Sprewell wouldn't even meet his former coach
halfway.
|  | | Latrell Sprewell still has some fans in Oakland. |
Carlesimo had expressed hopes of shaking hands with Sprewell
during pregame introductions but Sprewell stayed by the New York
Knicks basket and the Golden State Warriors coach was left standing
by himself at midcourt, before finally returning to the bench.
"There's no obligation on his part to do that," Carlesimo said
afterward. "If the opportunity was there, yeah, I would have been
happy to shake his hand. But it's not like he didn't do the right
thing."
Sprewell said a conciliatory meeting with Carlesimo just wasn't
to be on this night but suggested it could happen in time.
"I think if we saw each other, we could have gotten past
everything, said hello and moved on but that didn't happen,"
Sprewell said.
Sprewell took the game's first shot and missed badly, with one
fan yelling "Nice shot, Spree!" Fans booed each time Sprewell
touched the ball.
Sprewell scored 14 points in the Knicks' 86-79 victory,
including a dunk near the end of the game that he celebrated by
running past the Warriors bench.
"That was the highlight of my night," Sprewell said. "I
didn't say anything. I just wanted to show them I was here, make a
little bit of eye contact with everybody on the team."
He was replaced with less than a minute to play after he and Chris Mills got technical fouls for shoving each other.
Before the game, Sprewell, was greeted by cheers, applause and
chants of "Spree!, Spree!" upon taking the floor Saturday night
for pregame warmups. But he ignored a child who sought his
autograph by dangling his old Golden State Warriors jersey over a
railing.
Then, he got in a brief shouting match with a heckler who came
to courtside and yelled repeatedly, "Spree, who are you going to
sue now?"
Sprewell, facing Carlesimo for the first time since choking the
Warriors coach in a fit rage at a team practice, stopped taking his
practice shots for a moment, turned toward the heckler and told the
fan to shut up and used an expletive.
Security guards escorted the heckler away from courtside and
other fans shouted him down, one yelling, "Don't worry about it,
Spree. Go for 40 tonight."
The Oakland Arena remained a house divided, erupting in a
seemingly equal mixture of cheers and boos when Sprewell led the
Knicks onto the floor for the last round of warmups, starting the
drills off with a thundering tomahawk dunk.
"Choke on that Spree!" one sign held aloft by a fan said.
"Spree is God," said another. Ushers were busy confiscating many
of the signs, which are not allowed if they're considered
derogatory.
The game drew a capacity crowd to the Oakland Arena, putting
Sprewell and Carlesimo together on the basketball court for the
first time since the infamous confrontation that stigmatized the
star guard and put Carlesimo's sometimes abrasive coaching style on
trial.
"I don't think it's ever going to be over," Carlesimo said.
"I think it is another step toward putting it in the background.
But no, I don't think it is ever going to over for Spree and
myself. I think with each successive game it will be less and less
of a story. At least I hope so."
The tension leading up to the matchup between the
Carlesimo-coached Warriors and the Sprewell-led Knicks had been
building all week, heightened by Sprewell's simmering anger and
caustic remarks that he hoped to crush his old team.
"I'd love it if we just killed them," Sprewell said earlier in
the week.
Even some of the Warriors players were taken aback by Sprewell's
harsh outlook but others said they understood it.
"I can't blame him," said Chris Mills, one of three former Knicks traded to the Warriors for Sprewell. "I guess he feels he
got the raw end of the deal and wants to annihilate our team."
Carlesimo had refused to respond to Sprewell's comments and
continued to hope for some kind of closure, though he acknowledged
he'll face another round Dec. 7 when the Warriors play at New York.
"I look forward to the time that he can play basketball and I
can coach basketball and that will be the story," he said.
In a light moment amidst all of the tension surrounding the
game, Carlesimo was asked how he planned to defend Sprewell.
"I'm not going to fortunately," a smiling Carlesimo said.
"But Spree is not the kind of guy you want to play one on one
anytime."
Sprewell lost about $6 million in wages while serving a 68-game
suspension that followed the Dec. 1, 1997, assault at the Warriors
practice facility.
But his career, saved by a long arbitration process, is back on
track with the Knicks, who acquired Sprewell in a January trade
that sent John Starks, Terry Cummings and Mills to Golden State.
Last season, Sprewell helped the Knicks reach the NBA Finals and
they recently signed him to a $61.8 million contract, marking a
dramatic turnaround to a career that was on the brink of ruin.
Sprewell, whose assault prompted national debate on the often
antagonistic nature of coach-player relations as well as structure
in the workplace, still insists he was mistreated by Carlesimo. He
also remains angry that Warriors management ignored player
complaints about what some regard as Carlesimo's overbearing
coaching style.
Sprewell also blames for Warriors for being stigmatized as the
player who choked his coach.
Initially, the Warriors tried to keep it a secret but called a
late night news conference after it became apparent the story was
about to get out.
At the time, the Warriors said Sprewell would be penalized for
assaulting Carlesimo but refused to explain the welts on the
coach's neck.
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