The Contender | Ron Artest
Ron Artest goes toe to toe with NBA analysts, Hip-Hop haters, and of course, himself. Are you ready for Round 1?
Ron Artest is looking for a fight. And if life were literally a battle, as so many wise men attest to, then Ron would be sitting in his corner right now, his eyes fixed across the ring, wondering why life continues to challenge him and why it simply won’t leave him alone.
He fidgets in that corner, incessantly. He makes eye contact, warily. He smiles, elusively, and then lets go of short laughter, right after he sticks you with a poignant comment. Like a jab.
Ron jokes that way. Only you don’t know if he’s joking.
It was more than a year ago that I was here last. I arrived the day before Ron and his Indiana Pacers were set to meet the Detroit Pistons in a grudge match to see who would walk away with the 2004 Eastern Conference Championship. I met Ron at Conseco, followed him through town, sat with him inside his home and listened to his life story. He told me things like how he grew up a somewhat angry child in Queensbridge, New York. I talked to him about his father, a one-time Golden Glover, and about how he reminds himself of his father—but not because Ron, Sr. shares his son’s streak of fiery anger, but because pops was also a good guy. A good athlete. Competitive.
What I remember most is a conversation with Jermaine O’Neal, the Pacers’ other best player. It was O’Neal that told me Ron Artest reminded him of himself. But not because Ron shares Jermaine’s athleticism or good nature. But because Ron can get mad as hell. Sometimes. O’Neal said he’s the same way. “Volatile,” is the word he used. I remember that.
But that was last year. Last spring, last year. And things change. And things, well, they stay the same. Things like Ron Artest’s volatile/serene nature. I notice that as soon as I sit down across from him in his home office. The world may have changed since November 19 of 2004—or, at least, the world of professional basketball—but Ron-Ron remains the same. Honest. Candid. Contradictory. Sincere. I ask him what the hell he’s been up to for 10 months. He’s had a lot of time on his hands.
“That was like two years ago to me,” he replies when I remind him of the last time I was at his crib. Time hasn’t stood still for Ron since he was suspended for the remainder of the season after igniting the infamous Detroit ‘brawl’ that became the sports story of 2004. It was in those moments that the most decisive chapter of Ron’s career was written. No matter what he does he will always be linked to that night, and weighed down by it.
“That chip on [my] shoulder means passion,” Ron says. He’s talking about the same chip he mentioned last year; the one he carries everywhere like an American Express card. “I’m always ready to go to work. I think people tried to calm me down a little bit. But it probably didn’t work. I’m still hungry, still aggressive. But at the same time I’m a little bit wiser now.”
He seemed wiser last year. Before the incident in Detroit, Ron had been a model citizen of Stern City. Techs were minimal, suspensions were non-existent. He was on the verge of being called a leader of his team. And when I sit down and talk with the man who, to many who have never met him, represents all that is in O’Neal’s words, “volatile” about professional sports, I immediately connect with the other side of Ron. The side that seems more peaceful than punishing. He reminds me of a sword: beautiful, honed to perfection, but deadly in the hands of the wrong man, or, in Ron’s case: the wrong mood.
At times it seems like the world is speaking a different language than Ron Artest. It’s like he wants to tell us something, maybe a truth he has worked hard to discover, but we do not understand. And he doesn’t understand us.
I read him a quote, taken from that day’s USA Today. TNT analyst Doug Collins has given his two cents. Ron makes change.
“It’s one thing to play passionately, and it’s another thing to play emotionally,” Collins told the paper. “Passion, to me, is love, joy, something that you can sustain. Emotion, first of all, runs out. And secondly, you’re always on the fine line of going too far. If Ron can somehow go from being emotional to just passionate, that would be a huge step.”
Does Ron agree?
“No.”
Why not?
“Because I don’t know what he’s talking about. It could be a good statement. But I don’t know what he’s talking about, not to say that he’s wrong. I don’t know what he’s talking about because I don’t know that language.”
A’ight. I ask him: does he think there’s a difference between emotion and passion?
“Yeah. Tim Duncan is passionate about the game. He doesn’t show too much emotion. People like Doug Collins? He gets a nice quote in the paper—not to say anything bad about him—but he’s still going off the brawl. Nobody’s looking at that year I had before that. So people [are] sayin’: ‘Ron Artest, he gotta play less emotional.’ What are y’all talking about? You *******s. Because I didn’t start no damn fight, you know what I’m sayin’? I was playing ball, with passion, and no emotion that day. It had nothing to do with emotion on the court, so what are these *******s talkin’ about? Not to call ‘em an ******* in a negative way.”
Of course not.
I ask Ron if he doesn’t agree with the Collins quote simply because his emotion is something he doesn’t feel should be traded in.
“It’s already been traded in,” Ron explains. “I traded it in like two seasons ago. These guys are late. They gotta do more research. They’re lazy, they’re getting paid too much money because they’re looking at TV and they’re not doing any research. They need to take a pay cut.”
NBA analysts’ salaries aside, Ron’s talk of “trading in” a part of his persona starts me to thinking about all the things people have traded in just to stay popular, paid, or both. Did Ron sell himself out? Did he stop being the emotive touchstone he was a few years ago to better fit into the system? He tells you the answer is no. And then he brings up a surprising role model.
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Do I think he's likely to end up here? It seems unlikely to me. But no harm in expressing why anybody would or wouldn't want Artest on the Kings.
(just joking folks) Course, in that case, the people wanting him won't know and won't be able to say I told you so either. Lose-lose situation.
