NBA Choking Incident Hits Public Nerve

SAN FRANCISCO — Latrell Sprewell, basketball star and alleged assailant, is Northern California’s latest Rorschach test, alternately a savage, a victim or a pawn, depending on your point of view.

The only thing that cannot be argued about the 27-year-old multimillionaire athlete is his conversational impact on this fickle region. When he reportedly wrapped his hands around his coach’s neck, he snagged the Bay Area’s attention like a rough fingernail on a nylon stocking.

Just listen to the conversation in any sports bar, bus stop, restaurant or radio show, and what you will get is a sociological analysis of a bad half-hour on the basketball court and a bad week’s worth of aftermath.

The Golden State Warriors guard not only received the harshest suspension in basketball history, but Sprewell’s punishment also caused the mayors of San Francisco and Oakland to jump to his defense, blurring the line between rule and recreation.

“His [Sprewell’s] boss may have needed choking,” San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown told the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, although he later softened his remarks. “It may have been justified. . . . Someone should have asked the question, ‘What prompted that?’ ”

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This week’s commentary will tell you more about the speakers than about the on-court altercation, which could end up costing Sprewell his job, $25 million and his ability to play for at least a year.

Many workers in the Financial District here view what happened Monday on the lacquered floor of the newly renovated Oakland Coliseum as a workplace issue: Employee attacks boss.

To several Bay Area elected officials, the “Sprewell incident” is simply status quo in racist America. Amos Brown, San Francisco County supervisor and Baptist minister, calls Sprewell, who is black, “a pawn of the sports culture . . . that has made African American males fodder for their economic gains.”

And avid talk radio listeners see conspiracy, but then, they always do. Frank from Santa Rosa on KNBR: “Don’t you think this was an organizational decision to get rid of a bad egg?”

On Monday, Warriors Coach P.J. Carlesimo--known for his no-nonsense, sometimes brash style--reportedly argued twice with the all-star guard during basketball practice at the Coliseum. Carlesimo, who is white, asked Sprewell twice to leave practice, but the player refused.

According to published reports, Sprewell then tried to choke Carlesimo. After departing for the locker room, the player returned 15 or 20 minutes later and threw several punches at the coach and threatened to kill him.

Other Warriors broke up the incident, and Carlesimo ended up with a several-inch welt on his neck. Team officials first suspended Sprewell for 10 games, then terminated his four-year, $32-million contract. On Thursday, the National Basketball Assn. suspended the player for a year.

The incident was volatile enough. But then the talking began.

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Mayor Brown, outraged at what he viewed as Sprewell’s denial of due process, Thursday called for an investigation by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris.

On Friday, he toned down his criticism a notch. “There is no justification for violence of any nature in our society,” Brown said in a written statement. “Violence in the workplace--or anyplace else--cannot be condoned under any circumstances. [But] without due process, we don’t have freedom.”

Brown’s previous foray into sports commentary was equally explosive. Thirteen months ago, after then-Forty-niners quarterback Elvis Grbac was intercepted twice during a loss to the Dallas Cowboys, Brown called Grbac “an embarrassment to humankind.” Brown later apologized, saying that he did not know Grbac’s infant son was having an operation for spina bifida.

Speaking to reporters Friday in his city offices just blocks from where the Sprewell attack occurred, Oakland Mayor Harris said the incident and the sanctions “obviously involve race.”

Although not condoning the alleged violence, Harris called Sprewell “a human being who needs to be accorded some level of sympathy. He has been involved in a transgression. He has been sanctioned. The question is, is that sanction appropriate? The issue is not over.”

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Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris was less circumspect, comparing what happened between Sprewell and Carlesimo to battered women’s syndrome, calling Carlesimo’s “villainous behavior” a mitigating circumstance.

“Look at this in the way of the battered wife syndrome,” Burris said. “The day the wife defends herself [from abuse], it might not be as severe as on other days. But she could not take it anymore. What we have here is a young man who could not take it anymore from a coach who is tyrannical.”

On Friday, the Warriors declined to comment, citing grievances filed by the National Basketball Assn.’s Players Assn.

Denizens of the Bay Area were far harsher in their estimations. Brian Graham, an interior designer waiting for a lunchtime table at the Royal Exchange, a Financial District sports bar, said Brown should pay more attention to things that concern him, such as late city buses.

And he viewed the incident as a workplace issue. “If an employee is insubordinate to the point of assaulting an employer, how does that concern a government leader?”

Finishing his weekly lunch at the Royal Exchange, bond broker Joe Brazil said that Brown should not get involved in a sports issue, and that he should not turn an ugly altercation into a civil rights case.

“It’s not one,” Brazil said. “Sprewell should be accountable. I’d get fired if I did that to my boss. . . . Sprewell crossed the line. What will the children think?”

Although Cassondra McCright, a San Francisco accountant, missed seeing Sprewell play in Wednesday’s loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, she called the player’s conduct unconscionable. On the other hand, she said, he is “still human,” and Carlesimo has a history of problems with players.

“I look at it as two egos clashing,” McCright said. “They both need to go to an aggression class.”