SPREWELL CASE NBA METAPHOR.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

Latrell Sprewell's supporters have accused the NBA all along of acting as judge and jury. An arbitrator didn't disagree; on Wednesday he trimmed five months off Sprewell's year-long suspension and reinstated the player's contract with the Golden State Warriors.

John Feerick's ruling doesn't shackle the league's hands when it comes to disciplining its own. Any NBA player in the future who attacks his coach can expect to be fined 100 percent of his remaining pay for the year and be suspended the duration of the season. That's the precedent set by Wednesday's decision.

At the same time, Feerick's ruling does limit the latitude of the NBA's disciplinary arm. By deeming as unduly harsh commissioner David Stern's one-year suspension and the Warriors' contract termination, Feerick sent a clear message the league can't cop an authoritative voice when policing its own.

So Sprewell loses a season and the NBA loses more of its reason, its players' association moving ever nearer toward becoming the prosecution and defense. Show us any other line of work where an employee can commit a premeditated act of violence toward a supervisor without fear of jail time and/or lawful termination and we'll show you a place where the dogs are on long leashes, the better to run the kennel.

Feerick, dean of Fordhan University law school, may have been trying to find some middle ground. But what good is it, really, when the whole hillside is eroding?

The Sprewell incident and its aftermath is a handy metaphor for the NBA, in which the principals seem to have a chokehold on the game and are slowly squeezing the integrity out of it.

Something's terribly cockeyed when players can stage insurrections, spew obscenities at coaches, refuse to honor the fine print of their contracts and point the finger of blame for poor play at their coach, their teammates or the officials, all with the covert consent of front offices too fixated on the bottom line to stop the bleeding.

After Sprewell physically assaulted coach P.J. Carlesimo at a practice on Dec. 1, a Warriors front office that had been installed after Sprewell's $32 million contract had been penned moved swiftly to dispense punishment, predisposed either by principle, a preference to create room under their salary cap or, likely, a combination thereof.

Sprewell's temper, which had revealed itself before, wasn't a turnoff to everybody, even if it mortified the public-relations-minded Stern. When the player's season fell in Feerick's lap, there were more than a few teams that let it be known they wouldn't be adverse to giving Sprewell a second chance in the event his suspension was reduced or lifted.

Gregg Popovich, the coach and general manager of San Antonio and a former assistant at Golden State, had no qualms about taking a chance on Sprewell, especially after the extent of Sean Elliott's quadriceps injury became known.

It was obvious well before Sprewell went for P.J. Carlesimo's throat that Sprewell and Golden State were in a doomed relationship. Feerick's ruling has paved the way for a quick and painless divorce. Come his reinstatement on July 1, Sprewell will become instant trade bait. We'd be surprised if the Warriors don't get a lot of nibbles.

So if Sprewell's objective all along was to get out of Golden State, he'll likely get his wish, though at a considerable cost. At $6.4 million, Sprewell's price tag for freedom must strike the likes of Rony Seikaly as absurd.

Seikaly was one of a handful of players dealt before the trading deadline who refused to report to their new teams, effectively nixing the transactions. Seikaly never warmed to a move from Orlando to Salt Lake City so Magic general manager John Gabriel ended up trading him to New Jersey instead, which is where Seikaly said he wanted to go all along.

It's a clear breach of contract to refuse to report to a new team within 48 hours of being traded. But team officials would rather redouble their efforts to unload a recalcitrant player than stand firmly on principle and suspend him. At least that way they get something for their trouble besides a throbbing headache.

The league had better hope the road to rehabilitating Sprewell's image is fraught with less peril than was Interstate 680 in Northern California this past Sunday morning. Sprewell was traveling south on the freeway when his 1997 Mercedes SL-600 collided with another car, resulting in minor injuries to the other car's two occupants.

Witnesses told police Sprewell was weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds shortly before the accident occurred. For a league losing its grip at the wheel, the symbolism has got to be unsettling.