http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dl.../1088/SPORTS04
Bob Kravitz
Team must change; player can't
By now, it's a bit late for the Indiana Pacers to have finally grown a backbone. They are right, of course, to accommodate Ron Artest's trade request, and I hope he enjoys scoring 27 points a night and losing 55 games a year in Toronto or Oklahoma City. But this should have been done long ago, long before Artest ever had a chance to destroy Reggie Miller's final year or undermine this year's team.
Even Monday, when team CEO Donnie Walsh stepped forward and said he would trade his team's perpetual headache, the Pacers gave Artest a break, giving him the Keyshawn Johnson treatment instead of suspending him without pay.
What else are they going to do when he's dealt? Pay his moving expenses? Send him a going-away present?
"I guess a leopard never changes his spots,'' Reggie Miller told me Monday in a telephone interview. "Look, I thought for sure, after a 73-game suspension, if you love the game that much -- which he says he does -- how can he not change?"
Then Miller paraphrased Malcolm X by saying he had been "bamboozled," "hoodwinked" and "led astray."
"Just like everybody else," Miller added.
Well, almost everybody.
That's what's still so hard to figure. How did so many good basketball people get so completely bamboozled and hoodwinked? It's not like there weren't a couple dozen hints that maybe Artest wasn't a beacon of righteousness and temperance. A guy murders a TV camera, commits a record number of flagrant fouls and heads into the stands to fight a fan, there's likely to be something amiss.
Maybe Walsh stuck with Artest because Walsh is a man with a huge heart, because he wanted to believe in the power of personal reform. Don't we all want to believe we're the ones who can help a misguided soul change for the better? That's noble and admirable in the field of social work, but in the NBA, it's rarely worth the heartache.
"I don't apologize for that,'' Walsh said. " . . . If anything, I'll feel we failed with Ronnie.''
Maybe team president Larry Bird stuck with Artest -- and posed with him on the cover of Sports Illustrated -- because he saw Artest as a kindred spirit, which, clearly, he is not.
Maybe, and I hate to be cynical about this, both Walsh and Bird saw they had a top-15 player who was making a relatively minuscule salary. Talent has always forgiven sin. Does anybody think the rarely used Eddie Gill would get a second chance, or an eighth chance, after wreaking that kind of havoc?
"It's sad because Indiana really has embraced Ron,'' Miller said. "He's never going to be embraced anywhere the way he was with the Pacers. If Indiana hadn't been so forgiving through the whole ordeal, I don't think the league as a whole would have accepted what was going on. And this year, everybody did.
"And now, it's like, 'You got us, Ron. You got us.' "
Fooled again.
Incredible.
So what's Artest really thinking here? That's increasingly hard to say. He talks about money, about being the primary scorer, about being haunted by his past -- like he wouldn't be haunted by his past if he took his game to the Yukon. Then, he gets mysterious, talks about how things were happening here that made him feel like the future was elsewhere.
If you try to make sense of Artest, you enter a maze without an exit.
"It can't be about money,'' Miller said. "Because if you can't be happy being on one of the four best teams in the league, being the second-leading scorer, getting the second-most shot attempts every night, and sometimes the most shots, if you can't be happy in a system like that, you will never be happy. Never."
He continued, "There has to be some underlying theme here. Maybe'' -- Miller laughed -- "he's getting bad advice from (agent) Drew Rosenhaus. Because he's not crazy. He's a smart guy who knows what he's doing and how to go about it. But in this instance, he's gone about it all the wrong way.
"There's no way you can do that to a team, from management to, especially, the players, the way they've backed you through all of this. This is no way to show your quote-unquote 'love for the team' and appreciation."
If there's something positive about this -- and we're stretching for this one -- it's that at least it's happened relatively early in the season. The Pacers can't hope to be a better team short term, not with Artest leaving and Jonathan Bender on the verge of retirement. But we've seen how they've played the past two games without Artest, wiping out Washington and Memphis. Given a chance to acquire and assimilate new talent, a more harmonious team may give the Pacers a better shot at a title than any involving Artest.
That, though, is up to the remaining players in that locker room, who no longer have Artest around as a handy excuse for distracted play. Say what you will, but Artest was among the most consistent players for a maddeningly inconsistent team. There are still in-house issues to be confronted, even without Artest.
At least, though, the Pacers have finally, smartly confronted the issue head on.
Too late, yes.
But better late than never.
Bob Kravitz is a columnist for The Indianapolis Star. Call him at (317) 444-6643 or e-mail bob.kravitz@indystar.com.
Copyright 2005 IndyStar.com. All rights reserved
Bob Kravitz
Team must change; player can't
By now, it's a bit late for the Indiana Pacers to have finally grown a backbone. They are right, of course, to accommodate Ron Artest's trade request, and I hope he enjoys scoring 27 points a night and losing 55 games a year in Toronto or Oklahoma City. But this should have been done long ago, long before Artest ever had a chance to destroy Reggie Miller's final year or undermine this year's team.
Even Monday, when team CEO Donnie Walsh stepped forward and said he would trade his team's perpetual headache, the Pacers gave Artest a break, giving him the Keyshawn Johnson treatment instead of suspending him without pay.
What else are they going to do when he's dealt? Pay his moving expenses? Send him a going-away present?
"I guess a leopard never changes his spots,'' Reggie Miller told me Monday in a telephone interview. "Look, I thought for sure, after a 73-game suspension, if you love the game that much -- which he says he does -- how can he not change?"
Then Miller paraphrased Malcolm X by saying he had been "bamboozled," "hoodwinked" and "led astray."
"Just like everybody else," Miller added.
Well, almost everybody.
That's what's still so hard to figure. How did so many good basketball people get so completely bamboozled and hoodwinked? It's not like there weren't a couple dozen hints that maybe Artest wasn't a beacon of righteousness and temperance. A guy murders a TV camera, commits a record number of flagrant fouls and heads into the stands to fight a fan, there's likely to be something amiss.
Maybe Walsh stuck with Artest because Walsh is a man with a huge heart, because he wanted to believe in the power of personal reform. Don't we all want to believe we're the ones who can help a misguided soul change for the better? That's noble and admirable in the field of social work, but in the NBA, it's rarely worth the heartache.
"I don't apologize for that,'' Walsh said. " . . . If anything, I'll feel we failed with Ronnie.''
Maybe team president Larry Bird stuck with Artest -- and posed with him on the cover of Sports Illustrated -- because he saw Artest as a kindred spirit, which, clearly, he is not.
Maybe, and I hate to be cynical about this, both Walsh and Bird saw they had a top-15 player who was making a relatively minuscule salary. Talent has always forgiven sin. Does anybody think the rarely used Eddie Gill would get a second chance, or an eighth chance, after wreaking that kind of havoc?
"It's sad because Indiana really has embraced Ron,'' Miller said. "He's never going to be embraced anywhere the way he was with the Pacers. If Indiana hadn't been so forgiving through the whole ordeal, I don't think the league as a whole would have accepted what was going on. And this year, everybody did.
"And now, it's like, 'You got us, Ron. You got us.' "
Fooled again.
Incredible.
So what's Artest really thinking here? That's increasingly hard to say. He talks about money, about being the primary scorer, about being haunted by his past -- like he wouldn't be haunted by his past if he took his game to the Yukon. Then, he gets mysterious, talks about how things were happening here that made him feel like the future was elsewhere.
If you try to make sense of Artest, you enter a maze without an exit.
"It can't be about money,'' Miller said. "Because if you can't be happy being on one of the four best teams in the league, being the second-leading scorer, getting the second-most shot attempts every night, and sometimes the most shots, if you can't be happy in a system like that, you will never be happy. Never."
He continued, "There has to be some underlying theme here. Maybe'' -- Miller laughed -- "he's getting bad advice from (agent) Drew Rosenhaus. Because he's not crazy. He's a smart guy who knows what he's doing and how to go about it. But in this instance, he's gone about it all the wrong way.
"There's no way you can do that to a team, from management to, especially, the players, the way they've backed you through all of this. This is no way to show your quote-unquote 'love for the team' and appreciation."
If there's something positive about this -- and we're stretching for this one -- it's that at least it's happened relatively early in the season. The Pacers can't hope to be a better team short term, not with Artest leaving and Jonathan Bender on the verge of retirement. But we've seen how they've played the past two games without Artest, wiping out Washington and Memphis. Given a chance to acquire and assimilate new talent, a more harmonious team may give the Pacers a better shot at a title than any involving Artest.
That, though, is up to the remaining players in that locker room, who no longer have Artest around as a handy excuse for distracted play. Say what you will, but Artest was among the most consistent players for a maddeningly inconsistent team. There are still in-house issues to be confronted, even without Artest.
At least, though, the Pacers have finally, smartly confronted the issue head on.
Too late, yes.
But better late than never.
Bob Kravitz is a columnist for The Indianapolis Star. Call him at (317) 444-6643 or e-mail bob.kravitz@indystar.com.
Copyright 2005 IndyStar.com. All rights reserved
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