Stern Should Go on All-Star ‘Spree’

Latrell Sprewell is the best and most exciting player on one of the surprise teams in the NBA this season. He is the best player on the second-best team in the Eastern Conference, a team that woke up Tuesday morning with a record that is one game worse than that of the Lakers, who won it all last season. Sprewell isn’t the only reason. Allan Houston has the numbers, and Marcus Camby has perhaps been the surprise player in the East, just for the way he has stepped in for Patrick Ewing at center. But Sprewell is the Knicks’ MVP, and everybody who watches them knows it. The coaches didn’t put him on the All-Star team Tuesday.

Commissioner David Stern can do it, and should do it. The fans voted Alonzo Mourning and Grant Hill onto the Eastern Conference starting team. Mourning is out for the year because of his kidney ailment, and Hill is out for the season because he needed more surgery on his ankle. It is the commissioner’s job to replace players who can’t compete because of injury or illness. Sprewell officially plays Hill’s position, small forward. Sprewell was third in the voting behind Tracy McGrady and Hill.

The coaches should have moved Sprewell up Tuesday. Maybe they didn’t because too many of them will never vote for somebody who once put a chokehold on one of their own. They will probably say that what happened between Sprewell and P.J. Carlesimo has nothing to do with passing over Sprewell. Coaches say a lot of things to get by. Sometimes the best lying they do is to themselves.

Latrell Sprewell isn’t even having his best shooting year, or scoring year, and he is still an All-Star. A couple of months ago Jeff Van Gundy was saying that Sprewell’s game is the perfect combination of style and substance. Van Gundy will tell you how much he likes Carlesimo, but what he was really saying that night in his office was that Sprewell, once labeled the all-time coaching nightmare, had become a coach’s dream with the Knicks.

Van Gundy was asked that night about various calamities that might sink the Knicks, who were already off to a good start by then.

“Well, of course, if anything happened to Spree,” was the first thing out of his mouth.

If somebody had told you before the season that the Knicks would already have 26 wins after 42 games, you would have laughed and asked what big trade they had made, for somebody like Dikembe Mutombo, and what they had to give up to get him. Instead, they have played the season with the players they had at the start. It seems there hasn’t been a single game when they suited up all of their best players. They are now second in the Atlantic Division and second in the conference to the 76ers, who have the best record in basketball. And Sprewell is the one the Knicks can’t afford to lose.

He plays out of position just about every night of his Knicks career. When Houston is out of the lineup and Sprewell does go back to his natural position, shooting guard, you see what he does. He plays like a star. He plays small forward most of the time. He plays point guard when Charlie Ward gets hurt. He plays both ends of the court every single night. People who criticize his defense don’t know what they are watching any more than most Eastern Conference coaches do. It shouldn’t be left to the commissioner to put him on the All-Star team where he belongs, but that is the way things work out now.

Does Sprewell have the numbers this season? He does not. He is averaging only 17.3 points a game. His shooting percentage is in the low 40s. He has had a bad back. He has played his three positions. So many nights he is asked to guard the other team’s best scorer. He was called one of the most selfish players in basketball when he came to the Knicks, and then when he went to the point to replace Ward, he was accused of being too unselfish.

There is no star in the league, at any position, who plays harder than Sprewell. At a time when Stern looks at the championship Lakers and sees Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant bickering the way they do, both of them having come down with terrible cases of Wanna Be The Man Disease, he has Sprewell on the other coast, playing the game the way Stern would like it to be played a lot more than it is these days, playing with passion and flair and speed. Even on a team with Houston, there isn’t a night when Sprewell shows up that he doesn’t have 30 points in him. He is more interested in winning the game.

“Whatever it takes,” he says.

Knicks fans were hip to Sprewell from the very beginning. They knew what he’d done with Golden State. Then they saw him play. He has been the best player here from the time he showed up. He is still the best player, and that is always about something more than the numbers. He should have been an Eastern Conference All-Star Tuesday. If the commissioner of the league doesn’t choke the way some of his coaches did, Latrell Sprewell will still be an All-Star.