Jackson, Artest Put Twitter Beef To Bed

You can always count on Ron Artest for entertaining news. This past week he didn’t fail to disappoint, going after coach Jackson on Twitter for going to the media with an issue he had with Artest. All’s well now, though, as Dave McMenamin reports: “Speaking to reporters before Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals series between the Los Angeles Lakers and Utah Jazz, Jackson said he had discussed Artest’s Twitter comments with his players and that Artest was apologetic and he was ‘sympathetic. I’d been a little animated [Thursday] at practice and I think I kind of stirred the mix, so to speak, a little bit,’ Jackson explained. ‘I kind of understood where he might have had some difficulty that day.’ The timing of Artest’s Twitter tantrum seemed peculiar because the forward was referring to comments by Jackson about his 3-point shooting made more than a week ago in the first round against Oklahoma City. Jackson explained Saturday that Artest was fined an unspecified amount Thursday morning for showing up late to practice and thought that his Twitter comments was just Artest ‘kind of lashing out a little bit.'”