RealGM

In your opinion how good was he at his peak which I’m guessing was around the late 90s or very very early 00s on the Knick teams with Houston and Ewing.

What player in today’s nba would you compare to him in terms of playing style and impact?

He peaked in 1997. Inefficient volume scorer who couldn't shoot the 3 and didn't get to the rim often. Undersized for a 3 and is best known for feeding his children.

Hardnosed defender though at his best . . . Tony Allen with helpings of both entitlement and crazy?

Let down by his coaches who tended to choke in big moments

henshao wrote:Let down by his coaches who tended to choke in big moments

Cost him a year.

Had alot of potential and looked like he was going to reach it in 1994 and 1997 but became a one on one player too much and forsaked defense mostly.

Spree had an endless motor, he never seemed to show any signs of being tired. His 3PT shot was probably most efficient during his 2002 & 2003 seasons where he shot .360% and .372% on 5.0 attempts/gm

He was always kind of a streaky player, he could have an excellent game where he'd be shooting 11/17 and then the next game he'd follow that up with a 4/15

He was a decent defender with high energy, and was also good at stealing a sloppy pass at the top of the key and dunking it off a fastbreak

Impact signal is mixed year-to-year but net .... not an impactful player.

https://sites.google.com/site/rapmstats/97-14-rapm-2 has him as slight negative in the full play-by-play era.

RAPM estimates 94-96 seem to have him near neutral, slight negative each year, with on-off looking slightly better in '95.
(player, net on-off (per 48 min iirc), Regressed RAPM, RAPM adj w/Variance
'94 Spree, -0.9, 0.07, 0.09
'95 Spree, 3.2, -0.63, -0.81
'96 Spree, -2.1, -0.73, -0.81
(fwiw that positive '95 is driven by a great defensive number overcoming a bad offensive number).

Another note, as someone who had some hype as dunker (at least a little, for instance I remember a mag giving odds of him among others winning a dunk contest, before contestants were announced), he didn't dunk much by the end (2 dunks in his final season, though he also had a down year of 7 in 2001 - he'd had 40 in '93, 46 in '97).

Reference box-composites see him as mostly around average, career and for each year (PER most favorable, WS/48 least). '97 an outlier efficiency year, as well as one of his higher volumes is seen by PER and BPM as his clear best year. Fwiw, it's his best on-off at +10.7 but they still weren't great with him on and RAPM whilst clearly positive is a lot closer to average (+1.22 at https://ascreamingcomesacrossthecourt.blogspot.com/2013/10/introducing-1990s-rapm.html).