Wanted: Desperate Team Willing To Give Me the Ball
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Ron Artest is a great defender, a talented scorer, and a deft ballhandler. Unfortunately, he’s also nuts.
That little problem reared its ugly ahead again this weekend, as Artest upset the Pacers’ apple cart for a second year in a row when he requested a trade. He went further, in fact, saying he didn’t like playing for Rick Carlisle and would rather play for the Knicks.
If you’ll recall, this is the same Artest who earned a suspension last season when he told the Pacers he wanted to take time off to promote his record label. It’s the same guy whose suspension for fighting with fans in Detroit essentially ruined Indiana’s season a year ago. The Pacers stood by him through all that, sticking up for him publicly at every opportunity. The reward for their loyalty? A knife in the back.
Artest also caused a stir locally by saying he’d like to play in Gotham. “If I go to the West Coast, I would come back to New York after my contract is up,” Artest told the Indianapolis Star, in reference to rumors that he could be dealt to Sacramento for Peja Stojakovic. “If it was a perfect world, I would be going to New York.”
As luck would have it, the Knicks also have a glaring hole at small forward, and a general manager, Isiah Thomas, who coached Artest in his first year and a half as a Pacer. That might be enough to swing a deal for Ron the Rottweiler. But there are a few flies in the ointment. First, the Knicks don’t have many tradable assets right now, unless they’re willing to part with Channing Frye, which they shouldn’t be. Second, they’d be acquiring a ticking time bomb, as Thomas probably already knows from the suspension-filled season Artest spent with him in Indy.
Besides, I don’t think Larry Brown would be especially enamored of Artest’s reasoning for requesting a trade: He wants more touches. “I’m so demanding of the ball. It’s not my fault,” he said. “Every time somebody is on me it’s a mismatch. It messes up the offense.”
Artest wants the rock because he’s already looking ahead to 2008, when he’ll be a free agent, at least if he isn’t in a rubber room or a psych ward. He says he wants to prove he can be a big-time scorer so he can get the big bucks that follow.
“Here I don’t think I’m going to have a chance to maximize my opportunity for my potential,” he said. “When I first got here, all I wanted to do was play defense. I never really cared about offense, but what I see is players like Kobe [Bryant], Tracy [McGrady], [Gilbert] Arenas, and Jermaine [O’Neal] getting the opportunity to maximize their potential on the court and to get paid. I’m out of my character a little bit here.
“I don’t think I’m going to maximize my opportunity just playing defense. I have to show I’m one of the premier players on offense on the wing. So when it’s that time, there’s no question what type of player I am.”
Of course, if Artest was really that great a scorer, we might expect it to show up in his numbers. Let’s look at two important measures of offensive production: True Shooting Percentage (TS%) and Turnover Ratio. TS% measures what a player’s field-goal percentage would be if we adjusted for 3-pointers and free throws, while Turnover Ratio measures the percent age of possessions a player uses that result in a turnover.
On both metrics, Artest has been very average this year. His TS% of 53.4 barely exceeds the league average of 52.6, while his Turnover Ratio of 11.7 is actually worse than the league mark of 11.5. Worse still, Artest has been playing selfishly, as his dwindling assist numbers show. In his last full season with the Pacers, he averaged 3.7 assists per game, but this year he’s down to 2.2 – which would be a career low if the season ended tomorrow.
Just to maximize the collateral damage, Artest also took some gratuitous shots at Carlisle. “I like Coach [Carlisle] as a person, but I don’t like playing for Coach. Don’t get it twisted. He’s a very good coach,” Artest said. “He knows what he’s doing. I personally don’t like playing for him.”
This puts the Pacers’ management in a very awkward position. If they essentially ignore the latest missive as just “Ron being Ron,” which is how they’ve dealt with him for most of his career, they risk undermining Carlisle, who coached his brains out in getting the team to the second round of the playoffs after Artest’s season-long suspension. Welcoming him back also could alienate the locker room – which already had issues – since Artest essentially admitted he’s looking out for no. 1 this year.
On the other hand, who would willingly trade for Artest at this point? It’s not like he’s a short-term risk, either. Artest’s contract still has two and a half years left on it – or three and a half if he doesn’t use his opt-out in the summer of 2008.
Moreover, the Pacers stand little chance of getting fair value in terms of talent. At his best, Artest is perhaps the league’s top perimeter defender as well as a multitalented offensive force who can score inside or outside. His return was a major reason many pundits hailed Indiana as a worthy championship contender this season.
To replace him with middling talent puts those hopes in peril, which is why the Pacers seem damned if they do, damned if they don’t. But at least one person thinks they’d be better off without him.
“I think I cause a lot of problems here,” Artest said in a rare moment of clarity. “They probably could win more games without me.”
Of course, they could win more games than ever if they didn’t trade Artest and he simply started behaving like a normal person. The Pacers have been hoping that day would come for four long years, but apparently the waiting was in vain.
Mr. Hollinger is the author of the 2005-06 Pro Basketball Forecast. He can be reached at jhollinger@nysun.com.