“Seeing the Marks on His Neck”: Media Backlash Over Warriors’ 1997 Brawl Was Fueled Due to 1 Reason

December 1, 1997, took the basketball world by surprise. During a practice session of the Golden State Warriors, Latrell Sprewell the All-Star guard of the team choked their coach. P. J. Carlesimo was the coach then; it was his first year with the team. On the recent podcast with Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson on YouTube, former Warriors player Joe Smith talked about the incident.

Scoop B asked Smith about where the media got the situation wrong during the incident. Smith replied it was because of Sprewell’s history, his image was already created as a bad guy image. “I think the appearance played a big difference by seeing the marks on his neck and kind of a little bit of Sprewell’s history before that kind of played a part into that as well.”

It was easier for the media to take a look at bruises and Sprewell’s history and connect the dots. “They kind of looked at him as a bad guy and he had this ‘bad guy’ image right before that anyway so they played into it.”

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Other Warriors staff members and players tried to break them apart, but it had already reached a level of intensity. “And by the time coaches and players could get to him, it was already going on, so we tried to break it up as quickly as possible to keep anything from happening but, it just happened so fast.”

Scoop B asked how the fight escalated to the level that it left marks on P. J. Carlesimo’s neck. Joe Smith replied, “Because he was approaching him and the second time, he came to him VERY aggressive, and they got face to face and it just happened.”

Smith continued how the Warriors players were all united with Sprewell since it was not just about the incident. Nobody was happy with how the coach was treating them. “But if you notice at the press conference when Sprewell had his press conference to discuss the situation. If you look behind him you see all of the players.”

Standing up to the manager was not only because of this one incident. But the manager’s behavior with every Warriors player was the same and they wanted to convey that message. “All of us players in support because we all knew what was going on and we understood his situation a LOT better than what the people on the outside were portraying.”

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