Sprewell Shouldn’t Curse at Fans, or Behave Like Them

Latrell Sprewell should not try to be the victim this time. He should announce instead that not only is he going to pay the $10,000 the league has fined him for having a dirty mouth the other night in Oakland, he was going to spend the same amount feeding homeless people on Thanksgiving--at least the ones whom another big talker, Rudy Giuliani, hasn’t had arrested.

Sprewell has won in New York, in so many ways, and still won’t act like it. He still obsesses about all the money he lost when David Stern suspended him for putting his hands around P.J. Carlesimo’s throat and seems to forget the $60 million he’s making with the Knicks. He has become the most popular player on one of his sport’s great stages, and it’s all in front of him here, and somehow he can’t stop himself from looking back.

It is the part of Sprewell that seems to make people, media people especially, as obsessed with him as he is with Carlesimo and money lost and everything that has happened to him since that practice two years ago. He should have kept his mouth shut and played his game last Saturday night, because he is, at his best, a great basketball player, in addition to being one of the most maddening and complicated and interesting athletes we have ever had play for a New York sports team. Even the people who hate him, who said he would be nothing more than a loser here, have to give him that.

And you certainly have to say that people are a lot more forgiving of his excesses around here when the Knicks are playing better than they are right now.

Sprewell makes people mad because he still won’t apologize for anything, because he won’t play by our rules. He doesn’t cry the way someone like Darryl Strawberry does and beg for our forgiveness. It is clear that he felt like he was trapped in some sort of abusive basketball relationship when he was playing for Carlesimo. So he did what he did. The other night he was verbally abused by the kind of louts you get more and more at sports events these days: white guys in suits, money in their pockets, who act as though it is terribly important to say lousy things to some of these much richer ballplayers.

No one is defending Sprewell here any more than you could defend him for skipping training camp. He was wrong to respond the way he did, if only because it made him look bad, because for one night he allowed people to think that he still has big trouble inside him waiting to break out. But the people who were cursing him--these pathetic people who think that buying a ticket to a sports event, a big ticket, gives them the right to say anything they want--what do we do about them? Who fines them for acting like punks?

Sprewell was out of line, deserved to get fined even bigger than he did. But what about fans who cross the line again and again and again? If you go to games, you hear it, because we all do. More and more the punks in the stands think they are part of the action. They cursed Sprewell, he cursed them. People in Denver threw snowballs at the Oakland Raiders the other night and then acted outraged that the Raiders actually threw some back. The athlete is supposed to take it all.

Stand near the tunnel sometimes when a visiting team is leaving the football field after giving the home team a good beating. See what happens there. Listen to the garbage you hear and see flying through the air. Think about all the times when you see beer flying in the direction of an outfielder trying to make a catch in the stands on the road.

Sprewell was out of line the other night, two years after he crossed a line in sports. It was only talk this time. That is why it only cost him $10,000. The Knicks have told him to quit it now, that it is time for him to move on once and for all. They have a right to say it, because Sprewell is the one who looked across a room at Dave Checketts and Ernie Grunfeld and Jeff Van Gundy and told them he had changed. It sure didn’t sound that way at courtside in Oakland the other night.

Van Gundy was the only one who said something smart afterward, the smartest thing anybody said about this whole incident. “Who knows what’s right or wrong in the NBA anymore?” the coach of the Knicks said.

Who knows? The line between what kind of behavior we accept and what we do not, who gets a pass from us and who doesn’t, becomes more blurred every day in sports. Sprewell gets fined for his language, and Keyshawn Johnson should have been fined a long time ago for that stupid throat-slitting gesture of his.

The player who once put his hands around his coach’s throat is now one of the most popular Knicks in years. He is not only one of the most talented players they’ve ever had, he plays hard, every night. He’s won. He should stop acting like a loser now.

When he sounds like the dumbest guy in the stands, everybody loses.