What Is Fair for Carlesimo? 

By Tony Kornheiser

Thursday, December 11, 1997; Page D01 

Nobody's talking about choking the coach anymore, are they?

Now they're talking about "fundamental fairness" for the player.

Latrell Sprewell's appearance in Oakland on Tuesday
afternoon was terrifically effective in changing the dialogue on
what had been an open and shut case of assault.

Now the focus will go to fairness and due process and the
uncomfortable presence of race. The possibility of defining
what's "appropriate behavior" for a coach will be on the table.
Choking that coach will be in the background.

Sprewell said all the right things the other day -- and said them
in all the right ways.

The first thing Sprewell did was apologize. The first person
Sprewell apologized to was P.J. Carlesimo.

Standing behind Sprewell was a silent chorus of players
supporting him, most of them Sprewell's teammates on the
Warriors (showing courage, considering they play for
Carlesimo). They never said a word. They didn't have to. Their
presence lent enormous power to Sprewell's side.

Sprewell said he knew what he did was wrong, and he
accepted complete responsibility for his action. He said he
planned to work on controlling his anger in the future. Sprewell
said that he felt he'd been vilified in the media -- and he smartly
did not vilify anyone himself, particularly Carlesimo. Could
Sprewell have apologized sooner? Yes. But he apologized
well.

Then Sprewell's lawyers and agents asked for a reduction in his
sentence, a one-year suspension from the league.

The famous Johnnie Cochran used his famous phrase: "rush to
judgment."

He said, "The question is fundamental fairness for Latrell
Sprewell . . . we're addressing the perception that this man was
deprived of due process."

Sprewell's lawyers and agent attempted to turn Sprewell into
the victim, a man too harshly punished, a man unfairly denied
the right to earn a living -- and to some degree succeeded.

Nobody's talking about choking the coach anymore, are they?

(A word about Johnnie Cochran here. By now everyone insists
that the Sprewell-Carlesimo incident was not racially
motivated. Billy Hunter, president of the NBA Players
Association, said race had nothing to do with Sprewell's appeal
of the NBA's one-year suspension, as did Cochran. But you
have to be awfully naive to think that Cochran's entry into the
arena hasn't sent everybody in NBA management, from David
Stern down, the message that race will not be ignored in this
matter. In circumstances such as these, image is very important.
So far the NBA has had the upper hand by projecting a
forceful sheriff's image against an out-of-control, self-absorbed,
millionaire player. But the image of an autocratic white coach
verbally abusing a black player can resonate, too. Cochran isn't
just another lawyer any more than William Kunstler was.)

In the days between Sprewell's apology and the decision by
the arbitrator on the NBA's suspension, the notion of
fundamental fairness will be closely examined. Whether
"fairness" is achieved, I believe a year from today Latrell
Sprewell will be playing in the NBA, maybe here in
Washington, earning millions of dollars -- and P.J. Carlesimo
will be gone from the NBA. I believe Carlesimo's NBA career
is over right now; somebody's just waiting to fill in the last date
of his employment. Carlesimo has had public altercations with
two all-stars, Rod Strickland and Sprewell. What free agent is
going to want to play for a team coached by Carlesimo now?
So what about the "fundamental fairness" for the guy who was
choked?

I don't know what specific words Carlesimo said to Sprewell
to foment his actions. Even if I did, I might not understand why
Sprewell got so angry. I am the same age as Carlesimo, and I
am suggesting the possibility of a generational and cultural gap
that neither man could bridge. Two years ago I had a
conversation with Chris Webber that convinced me we weren't
on the same wavelength. Webber asked me why I felt that
Wayne Gretzky had the right to engineer his own trade, when I
had been critical of Webber for wanting to have input on
Bullets' acquisitions.

"Gretzky has five rings," I said, thinking that was self-evident.

"Yes, but I work as hard as Gretzky for my team," Webber
said. "Why don't you give me the same respect?" It was clear
to me he was pained by what he thought was my disrespect for
him -- even though I was talking about history and
championships, not effort.

At that point I knew that the word "respect" had a different
meaning for me, a white man in my late forties, and Webber, a
black man in his early twenties.

Twenty years ago I interviewed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. At the
time he had gotten into highly publicized fights with Kent
Benson, Dennis Awtrey and Tom Burleson, all white players. I
asked him why most of his fights were with white players. He
said: "The lines of communication between blacks are more
instant, okay? If you can buy this, it has to do with body
language. Anyone from a black community can obviously look
at someone and say, `I'm not going to fool around with this
guy, because he's ready to fight.' A white player is slow to pick
up on that." Perhaps Carlesimo could not sense the anger rising
in Sprewell.

Sprewell is a clean hit for the NBA. He committed an
outrageous act, and although he is a fine player, he is a fine
player on a terrible team -- and not a marquee player -- so the
league can suspend him without causing a ripple in the
standings or with the advertisers. Sprewell's act took place in a
climate already heated by the outrageous incidents of Roberto
Alomar and Michael Westbrook that went largely unpunished.
In a sense, Sprewell is paying the price for them.

In the heat of the moment I thought a one-year suspension was
completely justifiable -- had I done the same thing to my boss,
I'd have been fired. Now, in light of Sprewell's apology, and
the understanding that the very nature of sports produces highly
charged, physical confrontations, it would not surprise me if the
arbitrator reduced Sprewell's suspension. Sitting out the rest of
the season would be fair; certainly, sitting out at least half the
season.

Let's not lose sight of what happened here. Strip away the
money, the color and the fame of those involved, strip away all
the attendant theater, and here's what you have:

Player A choked Coach B.

Then, after showering and dressing over the course of 20
minutes -- presumably taking time to think about what he had
done -- Player A came back and went after Coach B again.

When people talk about fundamental fairness, it's the "again"
that bothers me.

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