All Coaches Gain Some Ground

It just got easier to be a basketball coach, thanks to Latrell Sprewell.

The unprecedented punishment--termination of his contract with almost $24 million remaining and a year’s suspension by the NBA--for Sprewell’s attack on Golden State Warrior Coach P.J. Carlesimo shows that, unbelievable as it might sound, the NBA has become a coach’s league.

You could see it coming when Rick Pitino, Larry Brown and Chuck Daly signed those big-money contracts over the summer. Larry Bird joined Indiana and instantly became the most talked-about Pacer. Now there’s no disputing it. The list of coaches with juice no longer begins and ends with Pat Riley.

Shaquille O’Neal slapped an opposing player and was suspended for a game. Sprewell choked his coach and was gone for a year. The simple lesson: don’t mess with the coaches.

For years, the main difference between college and the pros was that the collegiate game was dominated by egocentric coaches while the NBA was dominated by egocentric players. If the NBA star didn’t like his coach he simply went above him, up to and including Penny Hardaway’s dumping of Brian Hill in Orlando last season.

Sprewell was the best player on the Warriors, but he came out the loser in this battle.

If coaches can take over the NBA, that bodes well for everyone in their profession--right down to high school.

“I think it’s going to help coaches on every level,” Hyattsville (Md.) DeMatha High School Coach Morgan Wootten said. “The coach is still the authority figure.”

The legendary Wootten and his team were at the Pond Thursday for the inaugural Wooden Classic High School Invitational.

High school is the last frontier where players respect their coaches simply because they’re coaches.

When a professional player has millions of dollars in the bank and a seven-year contract that all but guarantees he’ll be around longer than the coach, there isn’t much incentive to listen unless the coach also has general manager duties and can trade him.

Big-time college coaches are mini-corporations with their shoe contracts and national endorsements that make them celebrities. Everyone on campus stands in awe.

In high school, your coach is liable to be some guy who taught your English class in third period. But he still has power.

“The coach controls whether the kid makes the team or not,” Wootten said. “The coach controls the minutes. We’ve got all the things they want.”

So if a kid loves the game and wants to play, he’ll listen to the coach.

But kids watch TV, too. They see players ignore coaches. They see players throw towels in their coach’s face. They see those players are still in the league and they learn from them.

“Some of the more talented players tend to take bad habits with them,” Chino Hills Ayala Coach Tom Gregory said.

Gregory thought the NBA’s suspension of Sprewell set a good example, but he’s withholding final judgment.

“It sends a more powerful message and even worse example if someone signs him again,” Gregory said.

Glendora’s Casey Jacobsen, fresh off scoring 23 points, said “I’m pretty disappointed” with Sprewell.

“I felt that what he did was disappointing,” Jacobsen said. “If you have a problem with the coach, there are other ways to deal with that.”

He said he and his coach, Mike LeDuc, have a good working relationship. Nice and calm, which might be a good lesson for Carlesimo as well.

It never should have come to this, but maybe this ugly incident will show Carlesimo that this belittling act that worked at Seton Hall doesn’t cut it in the NBA. You can get by with selective, not constant, yelling.

“Anger . . . it’s like a mirror; it bounces back,” Jacobsen said. “I like to work together, get together on the same page.”

Sprewell’s got a lot to learn too. Plenty of NBA players have wanted to strangle a coach but haven’t actually tried. Then he completely ruled out any Tysonian excuse like “I just snapped” by coming back for another attack 20 minutes later. On some nights he plays at a level matched only by Michael Jordan. Mental weakness like the kind he displayed Monday shows why he isn’t in Jordan’s class.

Talking to the kids on Thursday, it seemed as if Sprewell would be better off listening to the high school players.

“I’d like to talk to him,” Jacobsen said.

Oh really?

“I’d like to tell him that being a superstar, the price you pay is being in the light,” Jacobsen said. “He’s such a good player, be could be a good role model. I think he’s missing out.”

Let Spree think about it when he’s sitting around the house or playing somewhere in Europe, while coaches all over the U.S. sit back in their chairs, feeling just a little more secure that some order has been restored to their jobs.