Apparently Latrell Sprewell likes his music loud and his jump suits orange.
The ex-Knick was arrested at his Milwaukee home on New Year’s Eve afternoon and charged with disorderly conduct after police received repeated complaints about loud music coming from the house.
Sprewell, 42, played for the Knicks from 1998-2003 and also for the Warriors and Timberwolves during a 13-year career which ended in 2005. He helped the Knicks reach the NBA Finals during the truncated 1998-99 season when he averaged 16.4 points per game.
But Sprewell is best known for a 1997 incident while with Golden State, when he choked P.J. Carlesimo, then the Warriors’ coach and now the Nets’ interim coach, during practice.
After commissioner David Stern suspended Sprewell for a full 82-game season, an arbitrator reduced the penalty to the balance of the 1997-98 season (68 games). Once reinstated, Sprewell was traded to the Knicks in time for the start of the lockout shortened 1998-99 season in the deal that sent John Starks and others to Golden State.
The Knicks lost the NBA Finals to San Antonio in five games that season and haven’t won a playoff series since.
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, police would not release details of Monday’s incident other than to report they had received two complaints within one hour Monday afternoon and had received several complaints of loud music from the residence in recent months. Sprewell was booked around 4:15 p.m.
It is not the first time the four-time All-Star has found trouble in his hometown since turning down a three-year $21 million contract extension from the Timberwolves early in the 2004 season.
“I’ve got my family to feed,” he said in explaining why he declined the lucrative deal. He went on to have the worst season of his career.
His suburban River Hills, Wis., home was foreclosed on in 2008. U.S. marshals auctioned off his 70-foot, $1.5 million yacht “Milwaukee’s Best” in 2007 and in 2011 Sprewell reportedly owed the state $3.5 million in unpaid income taxes, placing him atop the list of the state’s deadbeats.
In December 2006, Sprewell was accused of assaulting Candace Cabbil, his longtime girlfriend and the mother of four of his children, in their Westchester home and refusing to let police in during a 90-minute standoff.
He was ordered by a judge to stay away from Cabbil and his children following the incident, but charges were dropped as was a 2006 charge in Milwaukee that he choked a woman during sex.