Sprewell Wants P.J. Fired

Latrell Sprewell would like to be a Golden State Warrior again, providing P.J. Carlesimo isn’t coach.

“I’d love to be back here if he wasn’t here,” Sprewell said Tuesday in a meeting with San Francisco Bay area reporters.

“I’ve never had a problem with anyone else, not even the assistant coaches,” he said.

Sprewell was suspended from the team for attacking Carlesimo during a Dec. 1 practice. Two days later, the Warriors terminated the remaining three years on Sprewell’s $32-million contract. The following day, the NBA suspended Sprewell for a year.

But arbitrator John Feerick ruled the dual penalties were too harsh. He reinstated the contract and reduced the suspension to the end of the season.

Sprewell will forfeit $6.4 million in salary for this season, but the Warriors are responsible for the final two years and $17.3 million of his deal.

“My problem is with P.J.,” Sprewell said Tuesday. “I hope the Warriors make some kind of change or they’re not going to be very good in the future.”

He said firing Carlesimo would be the “ideal situation.”

“We’d be a great team,” he said. “And we’d hire a new coach.”

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Buddy Jeannette, a former Baltimore Bullets player-coach and member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, died Wednesday in Nashua, N.H. He was 80.

Jeannette spent nine seasons between 1946 and 1967 in Baltimore as a player, coach and general manager of the Bullets.

A native of New Kensington, Pa., he won his first title in 1941 with the Detroit Eagles of the National Basketball League. In 1943, he was the floor leader for the champion Sheboygan Redskins and played the same role for the Fort Wayne Pistons in 1944 and 1945.

He won a championship with the Bullets in 1947, when they were still part of the barnstorming American League. A year later, the Bullets shifted to the Basketball Assn. of America, forerunner to the NBA, and brought Baltimore another championship.