First off, I wanna go ahead and get it out there I will never call Ron Artest "Metta World Peace" or "MWP" as the Lakers broadcast team does. It's not that it's because he's not a peaceful guy or anything like that; but dude, you got beat to the punch by Chad Johnson changing his last name to "Ochocinco" and let's be honest, it's just never that cool to be the copy cat.
Back to the completely bush league elbow. What makes it even worse, was Ron's pathetic excuse that he elbowed Harden in the midst of celebrating a dunk which is completely insulting. Perhaps Ron would be stupid enough to believe that if someone told it to him, but no one else is buying it considering he wound up, took a full follow through, and was ready to fight afterwards. I know Ron is probably going to get suspended, and unless it's 25 games or more, it's too light. I mean really, how big of a coward do you have to be to throw a full force bow to the head of a guy who's not even looking. Making it even worse is that Ron is 6'8" and 275 lbs, Harden is 6'4" and 210 lbs.
I know no one has ever accused Ron of being a stand up guy, but damn dude, if you're such a badass at least look the man in the face before you try to knock him out. I'm no more than 180 lbs; but I guarantee I could do a lot of damage to iron Mike himself if I got to wind up and give him my best shot when he wasn't looking. Ron taking that shot at Harden would be like me knocking out a 6th greater in terms of size difference; and even worse a 6th grader with his back turned to me with no idea the blow was coming...
For all of Ron's talk about playing ball on the streets of Queensbridge growing up, watching this makes you wonder if he ever actually played ball there or if he took the LIRR 1 stop up and played at the Great Neck YMCA. Now I must admit I've never played in Queensbridge, but I'm guessing the street courts outside Overbrook High school in Philly (home of the great Wilt Chamberlin for all those guessing) ain't much different and throwing a bow at a dude's head with his back turned probably wouldn't end with you being asked to leave... But at the Y or in a NBA game I guess it does.
But I have an idea of how we could fairly settle this. Instead of suspending Ron, what about going to the old Persian eye for an eye system. Now Ron outweighs James Harden by about 65 pounds. There's a certain LSU product who used to play for the Lakers that probably outweighs Ron by about 65 pounds and probably still holds enough of a grudge against Kobe for costing him 2 rings by not passing him the ball that he would be willing to back up Mr Harden, especially if it keeps Mr Artest out of the playoffs. So-BOOM, there's our answer right there.
Till Next Week,
MN
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