photo: ultimatenba.com

It’s a shame that most people’s enduring memory of Spree will center around the altercation and choking incident of his Golden State coach, P.J. Carlesimo.

For basketball purists, though, the lasting image of the man does not center around his unfortunate mistakes. Strictly isolating his on-court exploits, Spree was lightning in a bottle. He was simply a dynamic human dynamite stick from the first tick of the clock to the last.

Latrell Fontaine Sprewell was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His childhood could easily be described as difficult. As a child, he witnessed his father physically abuse his mother. At the age of six, his parents went their separate ways and Spree moved to Flint, Michigan to live with his grandparents. He eventually moved back in with his father, who was also in Flint.

The rough midwestern city is notorious for it’s hardscrabble streets and take no prisoners style of playground ball.

“It’s hard to explain Flint,” Flint native Mateen Cleeves once told Bill Minutaglio of the Sporting News. “When you play ball, you are playing all day. Morning to night. We play down and dirty. We get up in your face. There’s a lot of trash talking. In Flint, you have to bring it or you’re going to get run over. We’re not going to stop for fouls. Coming from Flint, I mean, people are not going to give you anything. We don’t look for no handouts…. We’re just going to get down. One thing I think we do better than anybody in the country is play defense when we play pickup ball. You go to a lot of places and you see guys flashing and going by each other, but that won’t happen in Flint. You’ll take some elbows. Nothing will come easy. Sometimes, you have to walk across town. We took buses, we walked, we rode each other on bikes, one guy on the back holding the basketball.”

photo: si.com

That tough, no holds-barred attitude, where everything is earned on the court, was evident in the way Spree played the game. Whether at Flint’s Ballenger Park, Berston Field House or somebody’s driveway hoop, that blue collar ethic was instilled in him at an early age.

Remarkably, Spree did not play organized ball. Up until his senior year in high school, his entire resume boasted nothing but asphalt and pick up runs.

Before his junior year of high school, his father, a known marijuana dealer, was arrested after having been caught with a sawed off shotgun in his possession. Spree then headed back to Milwaukee to live with his mother. While walking the hallways of Washington High School as a senior, the school’s basketball coach, who’d heard about what he was doing on the playgrounds, cornered Spree and asked him to try out for the team.

In his first season of organized ball, he led the school to a 24-2 record while averaging 28 points per game. Sprewell won the Jack Takerian Award, which is annually given to a player who displays good character and shows respect for teammates, opponenets and officials.

photo: blogs.citypages.com

Despite his breakout year, no major colleges showed up with any offers. Gene Bess, the coach at Three Rivers Junior College in Poplar Bluff, Missouri scouted him based on Spree’s park exploits. Bess received a call from John Hammond, who was an assistant coach to Charlie Spoonhour at Southwest Missouri State.

“He called me one day and said, ‘Coach, there’s a kid up here — I’ve been watching him on the playground,” Bess said in a 2006 interview. “He can play and he can dunk and he doesn’t have any nonsense about him. He’s athletic, played very little basketball but he’s on a really good team at Washington High School at Milwaukee. He had grown up in Flint, Michigan and he was with his mother over in Milwaukee.’ Anyhow, he said, ‘I think you should take him.’ We took him sight unseen. When he first came in here — he just looked like another player at best. Little. Thin. I can remember like when we were at Kankakee, he broke loose and he dunked the ball, did some things. I had seen him do a little of that in practice. I started seeing that he then had a good upside.”

During his two JUCO years, Spree’s rep was solidified as a tenacious, premiere lock down defender and hard worker. He later earned a scholarship to the University of Alabama, where he teamed up with Robert Horry. He averaged 18 points, 5 rebounds, and 2 steals per game as a senior en route to All-SEC honors. But he again flew under the radar and came out in the ‘92 NBA draft as a sleeper.

During his rookie season, the basketball world awoke from its slumber as Spree started 69 games and averaged 15 points and 4 assists. In ‘93-’94, he made the leap to stardom and the All-NBA First team with averages of 21 points, 5 assists and 2 steals.

In four out of his five seasons with the Warriors, Spree led the team in scoring. In ‘97, he led all Western Conference scorers, with 19 points, in the All-Star game.

In December of ‘97, he had his run-in with Carlesimo. Instead of his name echoing on the sports radar, he was shown contantly on CNN as the black man with braids who choked his white coach. He was vilified and held aloft as example #1A of the NBA’s thug culture gone wild.

photo: weblogs.newsday.com

When those storm clouds subsided (though they’ve never disappeared), he joined the Knicks in ‘99. After squeaking into the playoffs with a 27–23 record during that strike shotened season, the Knicks knocked out the top seeded Miami Heat in the first round, beginning their improbable run to the finals. Although they lost to the Spurs, that Knicks team will forever be embraced by NYC. Spree, Marcus Camby, Allen Houston, Chris Childs, Charlie Ward, a hobbled Patrick Ewing, Kurt Thomas and Larry Johnson had the city on fire for the entire playoff run.

Spree endeared himself to New York fans with his intensity, heart, showmanship and willingness to take on the biggest challenge. He was forever adopted as one of our own. In the ‘99 finals, he put up 26 ppg. In the classic game five, he tried, through the force of his ferocious competitiveness, to will the Knicks back into the series with 35 points and 10 rebounds in the 78-77 loss.

In ‘03, Spree and Sam Cassell came to help Kevin Garnett’s cause by getting the Timberwolves to a game 6 of the Western Conference Finals.

photo: si.com

At the end of his career arc, he became known as the guy who choked his coach, couldn’t feed his family with the $21 million offered in a contract negotiation and who had cash flow problems that led to foreclosures and I.R.S. issues.

And although his career ended in rather unceremonious controversy, those who didn’t experience the Sprewell Effect need to know.

He once came straight off the playground and into the hearts of those who cherish the outdoor game. He also gained the appreciation of any fan that enjoyed being entertained and inspired simultaneously. Without the asphalt and the role it played in shaping his game, his play would never have had the global impact that he once enjoyed.

And he would not have given the desperate fans of New York a thrilling roller coaster ride in 1999 that they will always fondly remember.

THE PLAYGROUND IS NOT THE PROBLEM. IT IS THE SOLUTION!