According to a report in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Latrell Spreewell may be facing foreclosure on his house. You may recall that his yacht was auctioned off a while back because he didn’t make the payments on it or maintain proper insurance on the vessel. Now the story is that the bank holding the mortgage on his house has filed to foreclose on that mortgage for non-payment from September 2007 through January 2008. The bank claims he owes more than $200K in non-payments and late fees and interest; the report says that the house is valued at just over $400K.
You also may recall that a few years ago, Spreewell was highly insulted by a contract offer of $21M for three years to continue his career. The thought of his making only $7M a year was so insulting because he said he could not feed his family on that amount. He never got a higher offer and never played again. I think that extra $21M in his account would be a nice thing for him to have right about now, no?
I do not have the energy or the interest to try to find out the total amount of money that Spreewell earned in his NBA career but it has to be more than $50M; it could even be as high as $100M. Even with income at the low end of that range, several questions come to mind:
1. What is he doing living in a house that is only worth “just over $400K”?
2. Even accounting for taxes consuming half of his income over his career, how can he be “out of money” already?
3. Is PJ Carlissimo just a wee-bit tempted to buy the property at foreclosure from the bank so that he can be the one to evict Spreewell?
The NBA season is just more than half over. The imbalance between the two conferences is so stark that you have to wonder if David Stern is tempted to change the league playoff rules in mid-season. Consider the Western Conference:
Nine teams have winning percentages greater than .600.
Eight teams make the playoffs so one of these teams would be sitting at home and watching.
Only five teams in the conference are under .500.
Compare that situation to the Eastern Conference:
Three teams have winning percentages greater than .600.
Two other teams have winning percentages greater than .500.
Eight teams make the playoffs so three teams currently below .500 are going to be in the playoffs.
At this moment, the three “sub-.500 teams” would be Washington, New Jersey and Philly.
No offense to the Sixers’ organization but let me tell you why they should not be in the playoffs. Unless you live in Philly or are so close to coach Maurice Cheeks that you are mentioned in his will, you probably cannot name three players on the team. The reason for that is there are not three players on the team who are sufficiently memorable for you to waste synaptic energy to remember them.
The NBA really should not allow this kind of situation to obtain through the playoffs. As of now, Golden State and Houston are tied for the final playoff slot in the West with records of 31-20. The Sixers would be the eighth team in the Eastern Conference playoffs if the season ended now with a record of 22-30. The NBA has a large stake as a league and as a business entity to put on entertaining and competitive basketball in the playoffs; so, how does it make sense to have a set-up wherein a team that is 31-20 sits at home while a team at 22-30 competes in the playoffs?
Memo to David Stern: You are the smartest guy in the room. Find a way to fix this – - soon.
The Baltimore Orioles have traded away quality players in this off-season – - and the Orioles just didn’t have all that many quality players to start with. Miguel Tejada, Eric Bedard, Brian Roberts and Nick Markakis were the top shelf players on that team and at least half of them are not going to be with the O’s for 2008. This is more than a rebuilding phase for the team; this is a full-fledged retreat of scorched earth proportions hoping to be able to regroup and fight again a few years down the road. Meanwhile, the team had to deal with another roster situation.
Daniel Cabrera made a bit less than $2M last year. For that salary, his record was 9-18 and his ERA was 5.55. Just to be clear on this, that is a bad season. Cabrera was eligible for salary arbitration and he asked for $3.3M, which is about a 65% raise. How he and his agent avoided charges of grand larceny for tabling that offer is not completely clear to me, but they did. The Orioles compounded the problem by settling on a contract with Cabrera before the arbitration hearing; they will pay him $2.875M for next season; that represents a 45% raise for bad performance last year.
I think you have to conclude that Giants’ defensive coordinator, Steve Spagnuolo, demonstrated his football acumen and his insight last week. After the Super Bowl win over the Pats, Danny Boy Snyder and Vinnie Cerrato interviewed Spagnuolo extensively for the Redskins’ head coaching job. What happened next was that he left Washington and immediately resigned with the Giants as their defensive coordinator with a hefty increase in salary. That shows his football instincts are good ones and it shows why he just may be a really good head coach in the NFL one of these days – - in a situation where he works with a front office that can find its way out of a telephone booth without having to resort to a map.
Finally, an observation from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald regarding the recent Super Bowl:
“The official slogan for this Super Bowl is ‘Who wants it more?’ Evidently all of the good, creative slogans already were taken. (Although I like ‘Who wants it more?’ better than Phoenix’s city motto, which is, `Every mile, another Jack in the Box!’)
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…