Sprewell goes nuts

New details have come to light regarding Sprewell’s brush with the cops last December. Spree showed up unannounced at the home of his children and estranged partner Candace Cabbil. She asked him to leave and served him with a freshly minted restraining order. Sprewell snapped. Police reports state that he shoved Cabbil into a bedroom and smashed her finger ripping a cell phone out of her hand as she tried calling for help. Spree then allegedly dragged her down a flight of stairs and shoved her out of the house. And all of this with his five children looking on in horror.

Police showed up shortly thereafter to find Cabbil locked outside. The cops tried to negotiate with Sprewell for over an hour-and-a-half, “Many verbal requests were made to Mr. Sprewell to cooperate with the investigation and come down and open the door to let us in," said the report by the Harrison Police Department. "Mr. Sprewell responded to these requests saying that he would not let us in unless we had a warrant."

During the ensuing standoff, Sprewell used his children as bargaining chips by parading them before a window in hopes that police would see they were unharmed and go away. Eventually, Cabbil asked him to give her her purse. Sprewell apparently placed it outside a door. Cabbil's keys were in the bag - and she let cops inside, bringing the incident to an end.

No one ever accused Spree of being intelligent, but you’d have thought his ghetto smarts would have enabled a more dignified conclusion. Police Stand-off 101: Don’t hand the house keys to the cops. They will use them to open the door.

This whole incident bears striking resemblance to Michael Strahan’s adventure last week, and in fact stories like this are becoming more and more common. The Donald needs to bankroll a new reality TV show. You fill a house with the likes of Latrell Sprewell, Michael Strahan, Allen Iverson, Jim Brown and Lawrence Phillips. They can call it Juice’s Apprentice, and each week O.J. would eliminate one of his protégés using the signature phrase “You’re Cut.”