Metta World Peace — Ron Artest when he was with the Indiana Pacers — says he regrets his behavior when he was with the team.
The average NBA fan likely knows Metta World Peace more for The Brawl, but many Indiana Pacers fans remember him as well for being one of the NBA’s best defenders, as well as for the trade he demanded after Larry Bird gave him a second chance. Needless to say he is still a controversial figure for many fans.
Metta World Peace sat down with the crew of Highly Questionable earlier this week and talked about his life, which included 5 seasons with the Indiana Pacers, one of the stranger eras in his career.
His reputation in among Pacers fans is a complicated one. While there are reservations about him, many understand his mental health was an issue at the time and a very serious one. Some still hate him, but others might have wanted him back in an Indiana uniform towards the end of his career in a chance to make things right.
Bomani Jones, Dan LeBatard, and Papi talked to MWP on the show, starting out with his troubled childhood. Artest said he learned to cook crack at 13 years old — but he had people around him that thankfully helped get him through school and into the NBA, even if he wasn’t fully prepared for it as an adult, something he admits.
Here are some of the better quotes from the interview as gathered by the Indy Star, starting with how Reggie Miller reached out to him, as well as Jermaine O’Neal. He said he allowed his ego and jealously to get in the way of building better team chemistry.
"“When I got to Indiana, I was trying to find myself. Reggie Miller tried to help me so much, but at that point I was learning how to listen but I wasn’t there yet. I never really listened to Reggie a lot.”“Jermaine O’Neal always reached out. Great teammate, great leader, and I never reached back out. Jermaine, Al Harrington, these guys would go out and get lunch, but I would stay in my room. I wasn’t social. I would come to practice, give 100 percent, but I was never building that team chemistry.”“I was jealous of Jermaine O’Neal’s contract. I felt like I was a top-tier player, but I felt like the Pacers didn’t treat me like that. It was all about me. It was too much ego. Everything was about me. When I don’t get what I want, I felt like I was entitled and I lashed out.”"
As serious as some of the issues are, and how the affected the Pacers, there was a strange story from Metta’s time with the Chicago Bulls where World Peace applied and showed up to work one day at Circuit City. Artest told HQDL that he even put Jerry Krause — the Bulls General Manager — as a reference on the application.
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Like most of the stories Peace shares, he admits mentally he wasn’t in the best place when he did these things. You can dismiss the mental health concerns if you want to label them an excuse for his actions, but it makes a lot more sense to view the mistakes of his career through that lens than to blame it on a lack of maturity or simple disrespectfulness.
Some of the good from Peace’s tumultuous career is he’s used his fame to help bring more attention to mental health issues now that he’s started taking them seriously himself.
He wishes he would have handled things differently early in his career, but there is no turning the clock back now. It is unfortunate how things turned out for both sides, but at least Metta has dealt with some of his own personal demons since then.
Next: Frank Vogel Hired as Head Coach by the Orlando Magic on Four-Year, $22 Million Deal
Hopefully, one day the Pacers win an NBA title so the most bitter of Pacers fans can put that fateful night in 2005 in the past as it seems the player then known as Ron Artest already has.