Volcanic Sprewell Seemed Ready to Vent at Any Time

Time for a new set of TV spots: The NBA, it’s dangerous.

Here’s the really scary thing about Latrell Sprewell’s attack on P.J. Carlesimo: It wasn’t a surprise.

The enigmatic Sprewell jumped the reservation years ago and has been out of control since. His behavior has been ever more bizarre, all but leaving a dotted line right up to last week’s felony assault.

No one has ever known what to make of Sprewell. Early in his NBA career, when he looked so boyish

and uncomplicated, he was still . . . different.

One day, his pet pit bull bit part of his young daughter’s ear off. He had a big game that night, pooh-poohed the incident as one of those things and said he’d keep the dog.

Don Nelson, who made Sprewell and whom Sprewell would turn on, remembers how nice he could be, as when he went to the back of the plane to console Nelson in their last, storm-tossed days together, and how he could snap, as in a fight with Byron Houston at practice.

“Everyone thought Houston was a mass murderer,” Nelson says. “No one messed with him. But one day in practice, he punched Byron three times before he knew what was up.”

The Warriors were a rising star then, but they soon hurtled flaming to earth. Let’s just say Sprewell didn’t handle it too well.

1994-95: Upset by Nelson’s trades of Billy Owens and Chris Webber, Sprewell and young teammates write the numbers of the departed on their sneakers. Sprewell blows off appearances. Once, Nelson’s son and assistant coach, Donnie, goes on the radio, appealing: “We haven’t heard from him and we’re obviously concerned about his well-being at this point. We want to know if he’s healthy. Spree, if you’re out there, please give us a call.” The Warriors, who started 7-1, go 4-22 after Webber’s trade. Nelson almost begs to be fired, and is. Successor Bob Lanier starts out so determined to avoid alienating the players, he won’t comment on routine transactions like waiving Manute Bol, but by season’s end is rolling his eyes at Sprewell’s wild shots and casual defense. “What do you want me to say?” Lanier tells writers. “Write what you see. You’ve all got eyes.”

1995-96: New General Manager Dave Twardzik and Coach Rick Adelman are shipping out veteran malcontents to rebuild around their last young star--Sprewell. Sprewell feuds with Tim Hardaway, who questions his commitment, and calls Hardaway “a Nelson brown-noser.” They almost duke it out during a game. Hardaway is traded to Miami. The Warriors go 36-46. Sprewell, a free agent, has other offers but re-signs for four years at $32 million.

1996-97: Sprewell puts the freeze on newly arrived Mark Price, refusing to pass to him. It’s so conspicuous, one night a Warrior on the bench gives the palms-up signal to press row. Writers nickname Sprewell “World B. Spree.” The Warriors, still flaccid, go 30-52. Adelman and Twardzik are fired.

1997-98: New Coach P.J. Carlesimo, a yeller, isn’t going for high jinks, like laughing on the bench while the Lakers rout them at the Forum.

He tells Sprewell to knock it off. Sprewell says he replied, “Don’t talk to me like that.” Players say he called the coach “a . . . joke.”

When Carlesimo tries to talk about it at practice, Sprewell rebuffs him. Carlesimo takes him out of the starting lineup for the next game but still lets him play 36 minutes.

Next practice, Sprewell coasts and Carlesimo kicks him out.

Then comes Monday’s rumble. It starts as usual, a barked order, a flare-up, then escalates. The team alleges “multiple unprovoked attacks,” but an unnamed player tells the Contra Costa Times that Carlesimo instigated it, walking across the floor to confront Sprewell, who warned him, “Don’t come up on me!”

At first, the team covers it up. When practice ends early, writers ask Carlesimo about that welt on his neck that looks like a vampire bite. He laughs it off.

Team owner Chris Cohan and chief financial officer Robin Baggett are spotted in the hall. They say they just dropped in.

Six hours later--perhaps aware one of the writers has the story--the team calls a 9 p.m. news conference to disclose what happened.

Two days later, Sprewell does one of those “I’m sorry but” apologies, to “my fans, my family and my friends.” He tells the San Francisco Chronicle he didn’t mean it when he told Carlesimo he’d kill him.

“I was upset,” Sprewell says. “. . . I don’t like P.J., but I like my family. It doesn’t mean that much to me to see him dead.”

Not that the Warriors are hanging on every word. Their attorneys have been meeting around the clock to decide if Sprewell has breached obligations to maintain high standards of sportsmanship, set forth in a rarely invoked catch-all clause in the uniform contract.

Their consensus: Yes.

Wednesday night the Warriors lose to the Cavaliers before 10,065 in their expanded-to-19,200-seat arena. Security confiscates pro-Sprewell signs from two fans (“Free Spree” and “If the Coach Doesn’t Fit, You Have to Acquit.”)

Afterward, they drop the bomb on Sprewell. General Manager Garry St. Jean says cutting him, rather than trading him, is “the moral and ethical thing.” Of course, it’s possible self-interest tiptoed in. Maybe they’d rather have an extra $8 million of cap room than $8 million worth of, say, San Antonio Spur journeymen they’d have had to take back in a trade.

A day later, the league office nukes the rest of Sprewell’s season.

Not to join in all the celebratory piling-on, but it’s OK if Sprewell misses a year, at a cost of $7.7 million. All he has to do is fake an apology and someone will sign him. Even if he doesn’t get all his forfeited $23.7 million back, he should do all right. It’s proper to keep our coaches safe, although you can’t really say player violence toward their mentors is an ongoing issue.

Players’ cluelessness, callousness and indifference to their game and the privileges they enjoy is something else, and that’s been going on a long time, there and just about everywhere.

The Bay Area, where Sprewell (and Webber, et al.) acted out his post-adolescent rebellion, will be a long time forgiving and forgetting. In the meantime, it’s one more burned-out outpost where the NBA isn’t very fan-tastic any more.

FACES AND FIGURES

Termination, the new vogue: Despite 1,000 denials and promises not to return to the sideline--and to the surprise of no one who knew him--Dallas General Manager Don Nelson canned coach Jim Cleamons and named himself his successor. Nelson was going to fire Cleamons last spring, but owner Ross Perot Jr. wouldn’t go for it, leading to this season’s monthlong charade. In a final act of defiance, Cleamons installed the triangle, a reading offense that takes a long time to learn. In the end, it was a Bermuda Triangle and the overmatched Cleamons disappeared. . . . On behalf of Scottie Pippen, a hearty thank-you to Sprewell for getting him out of the headlines: Pippen remains estranged from Chicago Bull teammates. Even Coach Phil Jackson, who first defended him, ripped him. “We care about Scottie,” said Jackson, “but we’re going to hold this against Scottie because he’s walking out on us. There is that feeling, ‘Hey, we came back to do this job together and Scottie ducked out the door.’ Michael [Jordan] and I both packed our bags and were headed out the door, but our responsibility level to this team stopped us. Whatever he [Pippen] is doing, if he’s painting himself into a corner, he can unpaint that corner and come out if he wants.” In other words, Jackson was just being Jackson. Remember when Pippen walked out of that playoff and Jackson blew the whistle on him, as a way of scaring him back into the bosom of the group? The only difference here is it took Jackson a while to see how serious this was.

That was a brief golden era, wasn’t it? Minnesota Coach Flip Saunders, who scoffed at the notion $126 million would put new expectations on Kevin Garnett, zinged him indirectly after Denver Nugget rookie Danny Fortson roughed him up and Garnett settled for fadeaways in a loss to lowly Denver. “I can get 12 guys from the CBA who’ll play harder than we’ve played,” Saunders said. “The guys who are here have to take the responsibility.” . . . If anyone was going to discover a new way to turn the ball over, it had to be the error-prone New York Knick guards. In their loss at Dallas (Dallas?), John Starks, rising from the bench to enter the game, passed Chris Childs, who was dribbling next to the sideline, and knocked the ball out of bounds.