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Ron Artest spent 18 seasons in the NBA, and he earned a reputation for being a bit of a loose cannon during his time in the league. He was an aggressive player who was never shy about stepping up to defend himself, although it’s a bit easier to understand why that was the case when you consider his friend was once killed in a horrifying manner during a game.
The man who famously changed his name from Ron Artest to “Metta World Peace” midway through his career was a fairly enigmatic figure who was no stranger to controversy while playing in the NBA.
The 6’7″ forward made a name for himself at St. John’s before he was scooped up by the Bulls with the 16th overall pick in the 1999 NBA Draft, and he emerged as a solid contributor despite routinely helping himself to some Hennessey during halftime while he was playing in Chicago.
He was eventually traded to the Indiana Pacers in 2002 to kick off a tenure that was repeatedly marred by controversy.
In 2003, he was hit with a couple of suspensions for breaking a camera during an outburst after a game at Madison Square Garden and getting into with Pat Riley while facing off against the Heat, although that had nothing on what would transpire the following season.
Artest was arguably the catalyst for the infamous incident known as “The Malice at the Palace,” as he was the first player to storm into the stands to trade hands with fans on that fateful night and missed a total of 86 games as a result.
There’s really no way to justify what the big man did in Detroit that evening, although his aggressive tendencies kind of make sense when you consider what unfolded in upstate New York around a decade before he entered the NBA.
Ron Artest watched a friend get murdered with a table leg during a basketball game
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Artest is a New York City native who faced plenty of adversity while growing up in the Queensbridge projects. He harnessed basketball to deal with the anger management issues that began to rear their head after his parents split up in 1992, although he’d already been treated to the ultimate cautionary tale about the dangers of heated tempers prior to that point.
Before we dive into the incident in question, we need to both fast forward and rewind to 2009. Artest was playing for the Rockets at the time, and during Game 2 of Houston’s Western Conference Semifinals showdown with the Lakers, he was ejected after getting into a heated altercation with Kobe Bryant.
After the game, he attempted to explain why he’d reacted in that manner by using a story from his childhood to highlight his general mentality.
Here’s what he had to say:
“I remember one time, one of my friends was playing basketball. They were winning the game; it was so competitive they broke a piece of a leg from a table and they threw it. It went right through his heart and he died right on the court.
So, I’m accustomed to playing basketball really rough.”
Artest had a reputation for saying some pretty outlandish things, so plenty of people were understandably skeptical if that had actually happened.
However, based on a New York Times article published on April 15, 1991, it almost certainly did.
Lloyd Newton—a 19-year-old hailing from Queens—was competing in a Y.M.C.A. basketball tournament in Niagara Falls when the team he was playing against began to argue about a discrepancy in the score.
The outlet spoke to a police officer who said “A fight broke out between the players and about 40 fans in the stands” before Newtown “was fatally stabbed with a broken-off table leg” by Brian Young, a 16-year-old who was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
Artest didn’t explicitly say he was at the game in question, and when you consider he was 11 years old at the time, it’s hard to imagine he’d made the trek upstate to watch the contest in person. However, it’s pretty easy to understand how the story led to him adopting the mindset that was both a gift and a curse during his time in the NBA.