Ron Artest is Not Afraid, Not Even Close

The Lakers and Rockets got into it for real in Game 2. Derek Fisher will be out for Game 3 because of a body-check he leveled Scola with when Scola was trying to set a pick. Rockets fans were hoping that Kobe would be M.I.A. with a suspension too.

Kobe elbowed Artest under the hoop in the second half, and after Artest went to the refs to explain, and got no love from them, he ran right over to Kobe and started yapping. Replays showed that Artest, who claimed he was hit in the throat, was hit more in the upper chest. Further, it was in a rebounding situation, not after the whistle, so Kobe was not suspended, although he was assessed a flagrant 1 foul.

Artest got right into Kobe’s face, jawing at him until he got ejected from the game. After the game, Artest said that he just told Kobe that he was Ron Artest and that he wasn’t just going to take cheap shots like that. Usually I would dismiss it as posturing or bravado, but Artest is a bad, bad man. Former NBA player Mark Madsen discussed Artest on his blog yesterday, saying that “Of all the guys I’ve played with or against, there were always two people who stood out as aggressive defenders who guys around the league don’t want to mess with. Both Latrell Sprewell and Ron Artest are guys who you absolutely want to go to battle with. They are known as great players around the league, but everybody also knows not to cross the line with either one.” Pretty crazy that Madsen singles out Artest as the only player currently in the league with that rep.

Artest is an individual in every sense, and he says some ridiculous stuff. In the first round he called Brandon Roy the toughest player to guard in the league, while dismissing Kobe and LeBron. OK … but Artest took it to a new level of strangeness after the game. He was talking about the physicality and how it didn’t really bother him, how his days of reacting violently to that kind of thing were over. Then he dropped this story on the reporters, “When I used to play back home in the neighborhood there was always games like that … I remember one time one of my friends was winning a game and it was so competitive they broke a piece of leg from a table, it went through his heart and he died, right on the court. So I’m accustomed to playing really rough …”

What??? That’s got to be Artest just shooting off at the mouth or getting confused or something, right? I mean, there’s no way that during a playground basketball game someone broke off the leg of a table and stabbed a guy in the heart with it, killing him, is there? Apparently, there is.

According to articles found in the archives of both the AP and the New York Times, in April 1991 just such an incident occurred when a player from Queens (where Artest is from) was fatally stabbed with a table leg during a tournament in Niagara Falls. It’s really a horrible story, and definitely one of the craziest things I’ve heard in a long time. If I learned one thing, it’s not to doubt Ron Artest.

Game 3 of the series goes tonight, and it’s hard to know what to expect. Referees are bound to call the game very tight, in order to keep things in hand, but chippiness usually increases as a series goes on, and it’s not like either Kobe or Artest to back down. A tighter game should play into the Rockets hands, as they prefer a slower pace and a choppier game. The Lakers are currently a one and a half point favorite (-125 moneyline) at the BetOnline sportsbook.