Getting By On $14.6 Mil

Not that he cares about fans. By asking "Why would I want to help them win a title?" Sprewell spits in the eye of every Timberwolves fan. (If the NBA ever dies, we'll carve that quote on its tombstone.) Why win? Uh, because they're paying you the gross national product of a small nation? Because fans making half of 1% of what you make scrimp for months to see you play one time?

Spree can't relate. Spree doesn't have time to. Spree is busy tending to his huge yacht. Spree is busy driving his fleet of cars, including a custom-designed Lamborghini Diablo, a Rolls-Royce Phantom and a $300,000 Maybach, the one with a champagne cooler in the armrest. Spree is busy being pissed about the three-year, $21 million extension the Wolves offered him. "Insulting," Spree said.

Oh, it's insulting all right.

Shame on Latrell Sprewell. Shame on somebody so self-absorbed, so out of touch that he could say something so grotesquely selfish. And not just once, twice. Asked the next day if he regretted playing the "feed my family" card knowing that thousands in the Twin Cities are out of work and facing a bitter winter, Spree said--are you ready for it?--Spree said, "That's where I can be if something happens to me."

Can't we please throw this man a telethon?

No, you know where Spree could be without his God-given gifts? Standing in line at an Emergency FoodShelf outside Minneapolis with Michael Larson, an injured house painter living off Social Security, who gets $93 in food stamps a month. "If you can't feed your family on $8 million a year," says Larson wryly, "you're not budgeting properly."

Says Marc Ratner of FoodShelf, "I wish Mr. Sprewell could come here for a day. We have people who have to decide, every month, whether they should buy food or heat."

And Sprewell has the gall to talk about risk?

Spree, the only risk you face is running into an out-of-work piano mover late at night who has a wife and kids to feed but really has nothing to feed them--except maybe you.

But don't worry. When he chokes you, it's not like you'll be losing air or anything.