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Here are some random thoughts on this one...
max1mike
seems to me like more and more of todays athletes are finding themselves in trouble with the law.
Media. There's too much of it now, good or bad. Athletes have been doing stupid things since the earliest days of any professional league. It's just that the press is always looking for these type of slip-ups, and there's a lot more money these days to pay for this kind of information. Ron Artest is the easiest hit, because he's had a succession of problems, and he's always bound to do something "wrong" at any given moment. I never condone people doing stupid things, but Ron Artest is NOT the only pro-athlete (never mind everyday people) who's doing stupid things. Even the so-called "
good guys" do things just as bad (if not worse).
Ron Artest is made-out to be some kind of walking-time-bomb, but I don't completely buy into all of that. Why?
a) He adores Dennis Rodman and there'll always be a cry for media attention; probably half of what Rodman inherited from his time spent with Madonna no doubt.
b) As said above, even the slightest things could and probably will be blown-out of proportion, because a host of scribes need their meal-ticket.
c) Useless information still sells newspapers.
tennis_balls
i like Artest's game as well. it doesn't mean I know what the guy is like off camera and somehow support this sort of ugliness.
I'm actually pretty f*%#ing ticked-off with Artest at the moment, because he was on my
Yahoo! FANTASY roster and I dropped him a little over a week ago, solely on the reports that the
KINGS weren't going to allow him to play for the remainder of the year... OOOOPPS!!! Thank you useless
FOX sports updates for tipping-me-off in the wrong direction.
He suited-up no less than 2 days after I had dropped him. That was a huge loss, considering that over the past couple of months, he had been hitting roughly 50% of his FG and was playing in control.
Grrrrrrrrrrr... Needless to say, he was picked-up moments before I got word that he was activated again.
Edit-out pages of cursing and crying...
Edit-out webcam shots of Steed destroying his living room...
I've said it in other posts, but Artest is not only a "fantasy" god (when he's NOT launching-up shots like World B Free), but a great in-game player. When the whistle blows, he's tenacious and a guy who's easy to root for. For the same reason that I can't get into LeBron James, I CAN get into Ron Artest. He plays both ends of the court, which few stars do. Probably the toughest guy in the league, even though he's "only" 6'7". He would have slaughtered Ben Wallace (who's in the top 5% of
NBA tough guys) had they truly gone toe-to-toe.
Something I wanted to touch-on, was how people (namely scribes) use someone like the likes of a Ron Artest, a Barry Bonds, or an Owens as primes examples of what is wrong with society today. I read columnists everyday, who always push this higher-than-thou type of jargon as to why these people are bad. Fine. Okay, they'd GREAT examples as to how NOT to go about doing things.
But who's to say that the very people who are constantly pushing their angles down our throats, are truly better people. Why are all of these two-bit columnists that are finally given an outlet to voice their opinions, suddenly being viewed as earth's saviors, and our moral compasses as to what's right and wrong with the world today? Are these people perfect? They never slip-up? Perhaps not to the degree of someone throwing a brick at their spouses Hummer, but aren't their a lot of people who don't have perfect marriages?
It's funny, that the very papers/magazines/websites/programs who are constantly pointing their finger at these naughty athletes, don't seem to have a problem promoting them in their advertisements, which in turn gives them
both (generally) lots of money. Gee, what's wrong with North American society? Just athletes? Could we start with the decay of values that go hand-in-hand with the "
bling-bling" and raunchiness that generally grab headlines? I happen to like a lot of Hip-Hop, but are these people really the type of people I want to look up to? Do people who care SO much about "
street-cred", that next bottle of Krystal, and everything seedy that they can come up with, need any more air-time than they're already getting? They're always in the headlines. People generally don't want to read headlines about all of the good things going on, so we're left with chaos.
Getting back to Artest, he's
VERY wet behind the ears. He will not likely change. But he's an enigma, much like Dennis Rodman is/was. They're harmless, because I highly doubt that it's "cool" to copy what they're doing.
What's scary to me though - particularly in the
NBA - is that MANY like to do what people like Allen Iverson do, which is be a punk. A great one-dimensional all-heart scorer yes, but he's the poster child of con and hoodlum. Toss-in a hood wannabee with tons of tools and lots of laziness in Vince Carter. How about .5 dimensional dunker and hardly finisher Darius Miles? How about thug-promoter and drug-backer Carmelo Anthony? You've got to love how LBJ and D-Wade don't necessarily want to distance themselves from that teenage popularity contest.
I'm going to sound like some old grandfather here, promoting someone from years past, but I would look up to someone like Michael Jordan (as a player, and in part from what little I may know about him in general). Why?
- He was never a punk, trash-talker yes, but never a punk.
- Didn't fall into the category of having to prove that he's an "individual" by loading his body with tattoos, because everybody else was doing it (which people fail to realize that since most young people get tattoos, it's no longer a statement of being different... just the same).
- He
ALWAYS came to play,
ALWAYS practiced hard, and played both ends of the court. I don't necessarily carry about the player who's always willing to get dirty and sacrifice his body (that to me is stupid and something the scribes seem to fall too much in love with... think: Darrin Erstad), rather the player who fully utilizes his talents, and doesn't cheat himself or those around him by holding back for the party after the game (think: LBJ, Carter, and go through 90% of the
NBA...). Oh yeah, even when he was making all of his big bucks, he always tried to get better and turned all the negatives as a means of motivating himself. He's anything but a sourpuss or a pouter.
- He didn't meet his opponent-du-jour at mid-court, to give them a big "thug" hug, and give them the "
call me" signal. "
Oh great, there's Vince givin' T-Mac another love hug and telling him a joke that they're both doing their best impersonations of Arsenio Hall laughing like they're about to barf-out a babies." BS! The day I root for Wade (and he's the one I expect to change first... if that's ever going to happen), is the day he walks past an LBJ low-five with just a dirty-glance as if to tell him that you're in for a rough night now and until the end of the game. Enough of this agent/gang/family crap!
Side Note: Something I love about Kobe Bryant, is that he's suddenly becoming the old guard (despite
still being only 28 with best yet to come). He's never really been accepted by the rest of the
NBA community, and I'm happy about that. I never really like him before these past couple of years, but I want him to make an example out of all of these punks. He's the only
SUPERSTAR who can play both ends of the court, and do things that Jordan did. Wade reminds me of Jordan in some ways because of his fire, but Kobe's all around ability are on par with Jordan's game.
Side Note II: Is there anything more boring than watching LBJ get his usual 26 points, with 3 hard-dunks, nice passes, and absolutely no energy between? I hope that 10-years later - when he's the 'old guard - that I'm
still not rooting for him.
- Jordan didn't push the hood on anyone. Sure, he wasn't exactly from the hood either, but he didn't play the race-card that others seem to love doing. He made no excuses.
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As a closing statement, I generally don't care for the mistakes that the athlete makes off the court, because I'm solely interested in them BECAUSE of what they do on the court. That's why they are where they are. It's the same for actors, writers, or anyone else in the spotlight.
Waking-up each morning to hoards of gossip headlines about other people's problems, doesn't make me feel better about myself or instantly propel me into the guy side of humanity. That's a wrong way to go about looking at it, and getting back to some of the voices in the media, they seem to get carried away with thinking that they're on the good side of that spectrum.
Steed
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