Certain times throughout each basketball season, it seems as if the Lakers’ volatile forward Ron Artest focuses his attention on a singular player to take out his aggressions on. With the 2011 NBA Playoffs quickly approaching, the newest Portland Trailblazer Gerald Wallace, has been feeling the fury and unpredictable demeanor of Ron-Ron over the past few months.
Early on in his career, Artest has been involved in a number of ugly incidents and on-court flagrant fouls with players like Ben Wallace, Manu Ginobili, Kevin Garnett, and even current Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant when he was a member of the Houston Rockets. Despite being regarded as one of the league’s most feared and staunch defenders (he did win the 2004 Defensive POY), you just never know when he will snap, like his involvement in the now infamous “Malace at the Palace” in Detroit during the ’04-’05 season.
Not surprisingly, LA Lakers coach Phil Jackson has done an unbelievable job in helping to keep Artest at least somewhat in line over his 2 seasons in Los Angeles. Maybe it’s his experience in taming future NBA Hall of Famer and noted attention getter Dennis Rodman with the Chicago Bulls years ago or that he personally makes sure that Ron-Ron stays on his meds.
But is Artest beginning to slip back into his old out of control behavior? Recent video evidence of a game on March 20th between the Lakers and Trailblazers, where Ron instigated another incident involving elbows and technical fouls seem to indicate that he may be close to going on tilt in the near future.
If that wasn’t bad enough, in the Lakers loss to Portland this past Friday, Artest was again out of control and seemed hell bent on getting into another physical altercation with Wallace once again. On 3 separate occasions Artest either throws an elbow at the back of Wallace’s head or throws the former Charlotte Bobcat to the floor before earning an automatic ejection late in the 4th quarter. It should make for some interesting drama come Playoff time.
Allen Moll has been a lifelong NBA and NCAA College Basketball fan who watches and studies games religiously, and coaches youth basketball in his native Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. Allen also provides content to Bleacherreport.com, Upperdeckblog.com, in addition to being a tenured NBA and NCAA columnist for TheHoopDoctors.com.
