YOUR first reaction, no doubt, will be anger. There are two reasons for that.
Foremost is the improbable affinity that grew between Latrell Sprewell and the people of basketball New York, something no one could have predicted on Jan. 21, 1999, the day Dave Checketts agreed to grant Sprewell a second lease on his career. An army of No. 8 jerseys – lasting testaments to that shotgun affair – will soon lie obsolete, assuming the final details can be worked out on the blockbuster, four-team trade that would finalize Sprewell’s exile.
Secondly, but by no means secondarily, there is this: Knicks fans are schooled to believe that if Scott Layden is the man making the deal, then it is guaranteed to be a dreadful one. No matter what
That is not the case this time, no matter how discomforting the idea of seeing Keith Van Horn, the Sta-Puft Forward, in a Knicks uniform may seem to you now. This is a smart move by Layden, a terrific deal for the Knicks, one that makes them better now, and bigger, and more diverse, and, dare we say, more dangerous.
Ridding the Knicks of Sprewell has been a priority for Layden ever since Sprewell reminded the world for the millionth time last fall that he is, and always will be, completely incapable of recognizing rules, respecting bosses, living professional life in complete good faith. Fans were always blinded by Sprewell’s passion, by his boundless basketball energy. But it came at a price; Sprewell always has provided just as many headaches as thrills.
There is also this inescapable truth: Sprewell simply is not the player he was five years ago, or even two years ago. As he nears his 33rd birthday, the weapons that always made him such a unique force have regressed. He is no longer the quickest man on the floor, the fastest man on the floor. He can be in flashes, in starts and stops. But as he gets older, as a decade in The League begins to take a lasting toll, those patches of brilliance will arrive in shorter and shorter bursts.
Really, it would be smart to deal Sprewell now even if he wasn’t an organizational carcinogen, simply because it’s always best to part with a star too soon than too late, a hard lesson the Mets surely will learn soon enough about Mike Piazza. And if Van Horn is the best-available bait, the best salary-cap wash, then Layden did well to snap him up.
Van Horn became everyone’s favorite scapegoat with the Nets, but it’s worthwhile to take a closer look at the charges brought against him after he was traded to Philadelphia.
COUNT 1 – He’s too soft: Van Horn himself might plead nolo contendere to the notion that he hardly evokes images of, say, a young Charles Oakley. But that shouldn’t blind you to the fact that he is still young (he won’t turn 28 until October), still blessed with remarkable gifts for a 6-10 man, and was, long before Jason Kidd, a legitimate franchise cornerstone in Jersey. In fact, it was early in his rookie season that he dropped 29 points on the Knicks and first announced his arrival as a player of potential prominence. Those skills still lurk somewhere inside Van Horn; now it is Don Chaney’s mission to draw them out of him.
COUNT 2 – He couldn’t get along with Byron Scott: As we know now, Van Horn was merely one voice in a crowded choir on this one and may have been ahead of the curve on it.
COUNT 3 – He withers in big games: The person who filed this complaint publicly, Kenyon Martin, backed up that contention by shooting 3-for-23 in Game 6 of this year’s NBA Finals. It is also worth remembering that if Van Horn did disappear against the Lakers in last year’s Finals, he also helped deliver the Nets into them by hitting the 3-pointer that beat the Celtics in Game 6 of the Eastern Finals that year.
Van Horn never may inspire the fierce, almost cult-like devotion that Sprewell did around here, but he makes the Knicks better right now, and for the next three years. And isn’t that why you’re supposed to make a trade in the first place?