In 2003-04, Kevin Garnett dominated the league alongside a 4x All-Star who would average near 20 PPG in the Playoffs and would be jobless a year later.
Advertisement
Latrell Sprewell was the 24th overall pick in the 1992 NBA Draft by the Golden State Warriors. The 6ft 5’ University of Alabama product had an immediate impact upon arrival in the grandest stage of basketball.
He averaged 15.4 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 3.8 assists per game in the first season and made the 1993 NBA All-Rookie Second Team. That would be his lowest scoring season in the NBA barring his last season in the NBA which would come just 12 years later.
Sprewell was nowhere close to calling it a day in 2005 after playing 13 seasons in the NBA and averaging 18.3p/4.4p/4a/1.4s per game and even a bit better in his five postseason appearances.
But his ego came in the way of him becoming a probable veteran NBA champion. It soon led him to bankruptcy as well within a couple of years after his retirement which he never got an opportunity to announce.
Latrell Sprewell was a dominant force offensively with the Knicks and then with Kevin Garnett led Timberwolves
A 4x All-Star who got his 1st and only All-NBA First Team as well as All-Defensive second team selection in just his second year in the league, was a kind of player who could have done anything if he set his mind to.
After spending his first six seasons with Warriors, Latrell found himself in New York, and helped the Knicks reach the NBA Finals in the very first season. And against Tim Duncan, David Robinson led San Antonio Spurs, he averaged 27 points in the 5-game series that the Spurs eventually won 4-1.
Latrell Sprewell with the huge dunk in the 1999 NBA Finals for the Knicks pic.twitter.com/GzqQ5qD5kq
— Alex B. (@KnicksCentral) March 17, 2020
He played 3 more seasons with the Knicks averaging around 18 PPG, after which the Timberwolves got him to pair up with Kevin Garnett and Sam Cassel. His first year was as good as it can be for a big-3 team. He averaged around 17/4/3.5 throughout the season and 20/4.5/4 in the playoffs helped the Wolves to their best season in franchise history to date.
They finished as the best team in the West at the end of the regular season and made it to the Conference Finals, but lost to Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal’s Lakers.
Following that season, the Wolves offered him a $21 million two-year extension, which could have made him $27-30 million including bonuses, but he declined the offer saying “I have a family to feed.”
Sprewell rejected a $21 million offer from the Wolves and went bankrupt within a few years
With all the media noise and Minnesota fans chirruping everywhere he went, his form declined, and he averaged a career-low average of 12.8p/3.2r/2.2a in the 2004-05 season, which he thought would be his last for the Wolves but eventually turned out be the last in the NBA.
Latrell got offers from several teams the next year, including the ones that would contend for championships in the upcoming seasons. He and his agent declined all the offers, even from the Spurs, Mavericks, and the Lakers, and so Sprewell was a free agent going into the 2005-06 season.
His agent Bob Gist said that Sprewell planned to wait until “teams get desperate” around the trade deadline in February, and then sign with a contending team. In March, Gist said that Sprewell would not be interested in signing for any team’s $5 million mid-level exception, calling that amount “a level beneath which [Sprewell] would not stoop or kneel!”
Eventually, the 2004-05 season turned out to be the last, anyone would ever see Latrell on a basketball. To add salt to it all, in 2007, the wife sued him for $200 million. But that was just the start of his life falling apart.
After earning over $100 million in his 13-year career, he lost everything in less than half the time. Starting with his 1.2 million yacht, he defaulted his $1.5 million house/mansion mortgage, had to pay over $3 million in taxes, and later lost his other house.
The Alabama native is now worth a mere $150,000 and rents out an apartment in Milwaukee. Life indeed made him stoop and kneel in courts and other state and federal offices when he could have avoided it all if he took what he was getting.
