He had done so much to point the way toward victory, done so much to make Vince Carter look like the playoff novice he is, done more than enough to be hailed, on this day, as the best player the Knicks put on the Garden floor.
But in one instant, Latrell Sprewell nearly undid all the good with one strikingly bad and ill-timed maneuver.
It didn’t cost the Knicks in their 92-88 victory, but it certainly could have.
“We were fortunate,” Sprewell said afterward, “that it didn’t turn into anything worse.”
This was nearly a disaster for the Knicks and Sprewell, who did a masterful job hounding Carter, turning him into an off-balance jump-shooter.
But with 39.9 seconds left, after Larry Johnson’s dramatic 3-pointer inflated the Knick lead to 88-85, Sprewell messed up. Carter flat-out beat Sprewell on a drive, with no one on the scene to prevent what would have been Carter’s first and only dunk. But it never happened.
Sprewell, trailing the play, reached out from behind, made no play for the ball and grabbed Carter by both shoulders, dropping him sharply to the floor. It was not a vicious play but it was an obvious flagrant foul, which was correctly called by referee Bob Delaney.
Toronto got two free throws and the ball, but got little for their good fortune. Carter made just one of his two foul shots, and with their possession, the Raptors came up empty when they missed two shots.
Still, the blunder was not easy to overlook.
“He beat me pretty bad, the help wasn’t there, so I just tried to keep him from getting to the basket,” Sprewell said. “I don’t know how it looked on film, but I definitely wasn’t trying to hurt the guy or give a flagrant foul. As a matter of fact I was trying to hold him up. I just wanted to wrap him up. I guess it looked a lot worse than it probably was. The ref said I slammed him. I said no, I was trying to hold him up, if anything. I wasn’t trying to take him to the ground. He said if it happened to us he would have called it the same way.”
Luckily for Sprewell, the Raptors didn’t cash in.
“After [Carter] missed one and we get the stop, I’m feeling like we dodged a bullet there,” Sprewell said, “because if he makes two and they get a three or a two, it’s pretty much their game to lose.”