USA TODAY International Edition
Artest: ‘ I cost the Pacers a championship’
basketball at 9, after a psychologist suggested to his mother that sports would provide an outlet to express his anger over his parents’ separation, Artest had been praised for being so emotionallywrapped up in the game.
But over the years,
there also were times
when he had
whipped himself into
such a frenzy to win,
earn his peers’ respect or become the best player he could be that he lost all control in practice and in games.
Such as the day he threw a 150pound back- stretching machine and gouged the Chicago Bulls’ practice court. Or the night he grabbed a TV camera and smashed it against a wall on his way to the locker room at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Or when he got into a shouting match with then- Miami Heat coach Pat Riley. Or when he G ipped off fans with both hands.
But that night against the Pistons, Artest told himself on the team plane, that was his worst over-the-top performance.
“ I was like a tornado that got out of hand,” Artest says in analyzing the behavior that lifted him from a shy, scrubby kid in Long Island City, N. Y.’ s Queensbridge housing project to the 2003-04 NBA Defensive Player of the Year. And to one of the most notorious brawlers in professional sports.
“ At $ rst, being so emotionally involved in basketball was positive,” he continues. “ But then I couldn’t stop the tornado, and it turned negative. At times, I got so emotionally wound up that I felt as if I was having an outer body experience and I completely failed my teammates.
“ I told myself that night that I had to $ nd a way to stop being so individualistic and become a team player. I was hurting my team. I was penalizing my teammates. I had to get control of myself before itwas too late.”
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle is cautiously optimistic about Artest’s selfproclaimed transformation. “I love what I’ve seen so far,” he says. “ His approach. Very team-oriented. Playing hard. Playing unsel $ sh. Working hard. He’s very involved with the group, and that’s really important.”
Pacers CEO and President Donnie Walsh believes Artest has turned the corner.
“ I think he’s very conscious of what happened last year to him because he allowed his emotions to break loose,” Walsh says. “ Even before the incident, I feel he was working very hard to keep them in check, and then when they broke like that he saw not only that it happened but also that it cost him a lot and us a lot.
“ With Ronnie coming in here every day, he’s not allowing himself the emotional leeway to allow that to happen. He’s more even- keeled. He’s not as up and down.” Passionate, to a fault
TNT’s NBA game analyst and former coach Doug Collins thinks Artest can be the difference in the Pacers getting to the NBA Finals this season — Artest averages 17.3 points and 6.3 rebounds in the playoffs — if he can learn to playwith passion.
“ You have to have him maintain his composure in critical stages of the season,” Collins says, “ because without him you can be a good team and with him you can be a great team. To win an NBA championship, you have to have him playing at his highest level but also not doing anything at an inopportune time that is going to short circuit your team and cost you a huge game.
“ It’s one thing to play passionately, and it’s another thing to play emotionally. Passion, to me, is love, joy, something that you can sustain. Emotion, $ rst of all, runs out and secondly, you’re always on the $ ne line of going too far. If Ron can somehow go from being emotional to just passionate thatwould be a huge step.”
TNT’s NBA studio analyst Kenny Smith, who grew up in Queens and sponsored an AAU team forwhich Artest played as a teenager, says Artest can, and will, make that huge step. However, Smith says, it’s that his will to win — and his need to win at all costs — are such a part of Artest’s being that his passion for the game often gets swallowed up by his emotion.
“ Ron’s emotional, but he’s de $ nitely not stupid,” Smith says. “ I used to say when he was younger, some of the things we praised him about and our coaches praised him about, could lead him to trouble. If we lost, Ron was the most upset guy in the locker room, and the coaches would say, ‘ If we were all as passionate as Ron, we would’ve won this game.’
“Now the same things coaches praised him for over his career stand out because of the brawl. Ron cares about the game. . . . It’s an internal pride that urban kids have. Growing up in a big city, it means something to win or to lose because it gives you an identity. It makes you stand out. It’s instilled in you from 6 years old.” Gaining respect for his job
It’s easy to see what basketball has given Artest — a ticket out of Queensbridge for himself, his wife, Kimsha, 28, and their children, Sade, 8, Ron III, 6, and Diamond, 2, and their families. ( Artest has a fourth child, Jeron, 3, who lives with his mother, Jennifer Palma, in New York.)
Vivian Hat$ eld, Kimsha’s mother, lives next door to the Artests’ threestory brick home in Zionsville, Ind. Her house is behind Artest’s recording studio. His mother, Sarah, lives about two miles away in Carmel, Ind. His brother Daniel, 22, liveswith her, with three of her grandchildren ( Daquan, 15, Frederick, 14, and Ashley, 12). A sister, Angelique, 8, lives there, too.
Next month, Artest’s oldest sister, LaToya, 32, will move to Indianapolis, too.
Although it’s a big crew, it’s a far cry from the 13 people who crammed into the two-bedroom apartment that Sarah, a bank teller, and Ron Artest Sr., a hospital food service worker, rented in Queensbridge.
It’s also easy to see how consumed Artest gets with the game. The lawn, the shrubs ( and the weeds) at his house are wildly overgrown. “ I used to mow it myself, but I’m too wrapped up in the season,” he says.
Inside the front door, the G oor is engulfed with overstuffed duf G e bags. “ I’ve got too many other things to do than unpack after a trip,” he says. “ If I’m late to the plane, I just grab one. I wear the same clothes day after day anyway.”
However, it took being banished from the NBA for Artest to understand how much basketball meant to him and to feel how much it sustained him. At $ rst, he says, he moped around on the couch and ate his way to 284 pounds. Then, two months after the brawl, when he was allowed to practice ( but not play) with the Pacers, he shifted into overdrive.
“ Donnie Walsh, ( president of basketball operations) Larry Bird, Rick Carlisle and (teammate) Jermaine O’Neal, they helped me through something that could’ve been bigtime depression,” Artest says. “ I cost the Pacers a championship, and I felt guilty about it.”
Artest began working out three to $ ve times a day. He played pickup games on the court in his backyard and on courts throughout Indianapolis with his brother ( 6- 5, 280); his longtime friend, former Holy Cross guard Jave Meade; former St. John’s teammate and forward Reggie Jessie; Atlanta Hawks center John Edwards ( 7-0, 275) and Phoenix Suns forward James Jones ( 6-8, 220). Artest paid to G y them all in and house them so he could stage the workout games.
He even threw himself into Pilates and yoga.
“ He practiced all day, every day,” his wife says. “ He only came home to eat and sleep.”
Adds Artest: “ I played harder and at faster speeds than in NBA games. We went one-on-one or one-on- three full court, which is pretty hard. We would just do this all day long. It’s the hardest I’ve ever worked out. I’m a much better player than I was before the brawl.” Coming to termswith himself
Artest says it’s off the court where he grew the most as a player and as a person.
He spent time with his family. He took Diamond to and from preschool every day. His wife taught him to cook. He began working on a screenplay about his life, produced by Rhino Studios in Miami.
He started developing a clothing line, Tru Warier. (“ We’re thinking of creating a David Stern business casual line for NBA players,” he says.) He said he made $1 million from merchandise sales on his website ( www. RonArtest. com) after he was suspended. He did interview after interview to show “ the real Ron Artest.”
“ All anybody ever sees is the craziness,” he says. “ People need to see that I’m not a real, real wild, aggressive guy. I like to chill with my family, hang out with my kids.”
He produced his $ rst solo rap album, New York, which will be released in January through his Tru Warier label and distributed by Warner Bros.
By writing all the songs on the albumand learning to communicate his feelings through words rather than basketball, Artest says he was $ nally able to begin building relationships with his Pacers teammates.
After years of pretending to be the meanest, toughest basketball player to come out of Queensbridge, he had an outlet to express his more vulnerable side.
“ Ron wants to be closer to us,” O’Neal says. “ He’s been a guywho has been vastly misunderstood over the last couple of years. . . . He’s always been used to doing things on his own. When you do that, you don’t get a chance to rely on some of the people who care about you. A lot of the guys on the team care about him. His approach to the team this year has been much, much different.”
Pacers guard Stephen Jackson adds: “ Last year, and in previous years, he never came up to the front of the plane where the players sit. This year he’s up front, playing cards with the rest of the guys. He’s talking to us, eating dinnerwith us. He and I have even hung out on the road.”
For all that he lost by snapping at The Palace at Auburn Hills on Nov. 19, Artest says he has gained so much more.
“ Coming into the league, I never knew how you could make friends,” Artest says. “ I was young. I was a loner all my life. I had tunnel vision. I would go to practice, work hard and go home. I was not tight with the team.
“ Jermaine, the team, they always extended their hands to me: ‘ Come on, be part of the team.’ To me, that’s all you pretty much got; when you go on that road, when you go into battle, that’s it. But I was always too sel $ sh to see that.
“ What we’ve been through, everybody on the team wishes that it would never have happened, but we knowwe’ve made it and it kind of just bands us together. We’ve got one more shot this year to show the high quality teamand the high quality people we are. And we’re not going to screw that up.”