After the spinning rims ease to a halt and statements about feeding his family stop bouncing around the internet, we get back to the simple fact that Latrell Sprewell could flat out play basketball. This University of Alabama phenom changed the game with a Michael Jordan/Charles Barkley-hybrid game in Golden State in the mid-90′s (no, I didn’t call him Jordan or Barkley -- just commenting on the way he played ball).

His aggressive nature lead him to become an heir-apparent candidate during Jordan’s first retirement. This is a title that is played with throughout media spheres but promulgated by how it permeates the popular culture. For instance, NBA Showdown by EA Sports, sans Jordan, made Sprewell the first player in EA Sports basketball game history to have the full arsenal of slam dunks available in the game.

What always seems to confuse me about Sprewell’s game was the fact that he was a fundamental disaster. He jumped off the wrong foot, he dribbled into the defense using the wrong hand and his drop step usually ended with him using his lead hand to shoot the ball. These are things that should have held him back in the NBA, but as a microcosm of his NBA career these are not only the things that gave his game a signature style, but also tools that he built a 13-year career around. It makes you wonder, if he were more fundamentally sound would he have been a better player or would that have destroyed the few imperfections that made his game unique and spectuacular.