Metta World Peace's elbow is among the most brazenly violent things seen in an NBA game in some time. How should the NBA respond?
(Getty Images / Stephen Dunn)
Since climbing into the stands to strike a fan during the Malice at the Palace in 2004, Ron Artest has done all he could to restore his reputation. Like changing his name to Metta World Peace, and thanking his psychiatrist after winning the NBA championship in 2010. Those kinds of things.
On the court, Artest has become an older, craggier version of himself. When you make your bones on playing transcendent man defense against the other team's best wing, there's little room for physical deterioration. Offensively, he's a strange character, infatuated with three-pointers, a luxury when he plays well and an annoyance when he doesn't, which is most of the time.
Caring for a reputation is a fragile sort of maintenance, the kind that needs to be constant, because all it takes is one slip-up to erase years of work. That slip came last night, when Metta — affable mascot, goofily askance Twitterer, Kobe counterpoint — brutally elbowed James Harden in the head.
Make no mistake: this is the end of Metta World Peace, no matter how he tries to brush it off.
