Sunday, April 22nd, 2012 at 5:19 pm  |  178 responses

Video: Metta World Peace With a Vicious Elbow to James Harden’s Head

What kind of punishment do you think MWP should expect?

After throwing a wild and very forceful elbow at James Harden’s head, Mr. World Peace was kicked out of today’s game against the OKC Thunder, and you can safely assume that he’ll be hearing from NBA HQ about further (and much more severe) disciplinary action very soon.

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  • Jlp

    And this lunatic changed his name to World Peace. IDIOT

  • Ant

    For those of you comparing this situation to Blake/Rose, there is a major difference between being physical/chippy during the game and elbowing someone in the head when the ball is not in play.

  • http://www.slamonline.com Dagger

    To all the idiots defending this: there is a gigantic difference between a vicious cheap shot and a good hard foul. Give me a break. I bet you’re the same guys defending thugs going for headshots in the NHL. Artest should be suspended for the playoffs, period.

  • http://slamonline.com Jones

    World Peace not being very peaceful!

    Harden bumped him. It’s nothing special, it happens all the time after an opponent scores, but Metta decided to take exception to that, probably because he was mad that the Thunder/Harden was lighting him up and beating his team. Then he makes a nice dunk, gets fired up, and rather violently makes Harden back off. I personally think ten games sounds fair, considering his track record. I mean, you don’t want to encourage people to just start taking out guys, right? Imagine in the playoffs, some scrub takes out Paul or Rondo or Rose (small guards with injury history) that changes the whole series and the NBA shouldn’t let dirty play like that happen.

  • BRYANT BYNUM GASOL 24 17 16

    It was clearly unintentional. Honestly I think harden dove. He was just celebrating a dunk

  • SDC

    Same old Artest… MWP stands for; Man With Problems.

  • MATT

    So much for world peace!

  • SDC

    or Maniac Waving Punches. or Mad With People. or Modern Warefare Player. or Maddest World Player. or Most Wrong Psychology. or Mashing Whoever Passes. or Major Wack Person… anything but “Metta World Peace”.

  • EJ

    I’m a Lakers fan, and that’s clearly intentional. Not all of us are stupid.

  • TOMGUGLIOTA

    WHY IS HARDEN TRYINGTO GET SO CLOSE TO DUDE?

  • Dungeon Family

    Harden beard was leanin after that

    But Only MWP knows wither it was intentional or not

    I’m not about to shit up here and argue about it

  • http://Roosterteeth.com Caboose

    Thank you EJ. Hope for the human race.

  • AQWORD

    ^^ So Metta can viciously elbow him in the face & be suspended for multiple games, hopefully the playoffs too. With MTW its easier done than said.

  • SDC

    Whats the point of punishing him? That’s just Artest being Artest, he has some off moments every once in a while, and a punishment is not gonna change that. He should be stopped before somebody gets seriously hurt, and that’s up to either him or the Lakers to adress, not the league, cause they have punished him before and it didn’t work, the only way is to get rid of him or accept the risk, cause everybody knows he can get out of control some times and he showed today that, unlike his name, he haven’t change a bit, beware of MWP: Madman Waiting Psychiatrist. I mean, he does have a major in math, maybe he should think about starting a new career away from the basketball, and hopefully, any kind of court.

  • gubbins

    ^ You’re so right. Why punish people for their infractions, especially when they are against the rules of the game he plays & potentially dangerous. We should applaud Moron World Pants for his honesty and let him express his nature. Idiot.

  • Drig

    Metta deserved to be ejected. Plain and simple. However, anything more than a 5 game suspension and 80k fine is simply going off of Ron’s reputation and that’s BS IMO. And no, he does not deserve to be out for all of the POs. More like 2-3 games of first round.

  • doyouwantmore

    Artest is just crazy and not in a cool way

  • russian guy

    I think 15 games sounds right so he would miss the last reg season game and at least two rounds in the playoffs.But please stop with this ‘it’s ron artest,what u expect’ stuff.After the Malice he changed,he didn’t have a real incident in 6 years.

  • http://slamonline house

    lol Moron World Pants

  • duckas

    The guy should be suspended for at least 8 games to make sure he misses the lakers first round and I tell ya that gonna be it for the La La land. First round exit book it!

  • duckas

    And by the way how in the world (peace) have the thunder lost grip on this game they were up by 18- they are no title contenders i hope memphis or some other team gonna teach them a lesson. grow up westbrook trying to shoot every time he touches it 3-22 atrocious

  • Yesse

    WTF is wrong with him?

    This really reminds me of the old glimpses of Ron Artest. His name should be more like Metta World War.

  • Tempest

    He will forever be Ron Artest the phychotic drongo. I hope Harden’s alright hes a mad baller

  • reggie06

    WHY HARDEN DID BUMP INTO ARTEST???
    LAKESHOW!!

  • http://slamonline Jimbo

    ^ did you watch the video?

  • Sioux

    All of the comments here are about World Peace. Very few about Harden. I hope he’ll be OK. He’s a freaking ball player. I’d hate to see him diminished in the Playoffs. Not ’cause I’m a OKC fan, but oly for the fact that I love basketball.

  • Ali

    Pump ya breaks Thunder! Hahaha….The Mamba strikes back. Stop standing around, shi* everybody knows to steer clean of Ron Artest
    when he’s on one, Hahah…He’s had his meanest under raps for awhile but it’s still in him fellaz, you can’t change people. Harden had no business standing around looking in the wrong direction. Bet that’s the last time he does that shi*, Hahaha…

  • http://leipzig-eagles.de/ Speedy

    Everybody that is saying it’s Hardens fault standing around Artest should think about Kobe or another Laker player standing in place of Harden when Ron switches his brain off.

  • http://leipzig-eagles.de/ Speedy

    In this situation he could have elbowed everybody, no matter if friend or foe.

  • http://www.offthebackboard.wordpress.com Off The Backboard

    Nobody should be defending this in any way – anyone that does is just stupid, plain and simple. Look at the replay. It was calculated, and damn near dislodged Harden’s head off. Ron Artest is something like 6-8 265 with a lot of strength in his arms. That kind of hit will leave any one disoriented. Harden is likely okay but the potential of hurt behind that hit was very high. It was a brutal hit.

  • http://slamonline.com raylan

    When the NBA bans artest, the Saint will pick him up and make him more money

  • Kadavour

    the contact was intentional and uncontrolled and those reactions need to be discouraged. intent plays a part here too, and no one knows his intent, but it doesn’t look like he meant to do more than deliver a GTFO my way shot at whoever it was impeding his progress after the dunk. Consider this in your OVER/UNDERS: Kevin Love got 2 games for STOMPING on a dude’s head.

  • Kobester

    He walked away from Ben Wallace after he got pushed the F out and when he saw a smaller dude like Harden he threw an elbow. What a little B*tch!

  • http://www.slamonline.com Dagger

    It should also be said that Artest’s initial reaction to the dunk was ridiculous and immature. He was out of control before that elbow was thrown.

  • Pais

    When assessing the punishment you have to take into account the players history. Main purpose of a punishment is to deter the action or a similar action from happening again. If a person is a repeat offender then you can safely assume that the punishment the first time round wasn’t strong enough and therefore ought to be more severe this time round. The goal is to prevent this from happening again. But you gotta think at this point that it’s quite possible that there’s no punishment that can completely eliminate the possibility of MWP doing something like this again, and considering that this incident was potentially fatal it’s worth discussing as to whether MWP ought to be allowed to play again ever.

  • james

    im a lakers fan. artest did this on purpose because of the sh*t harden has been talkin during the last games between the lakers and thunder. i admit artest should let his game do the talking but i like the message he just sent. i doubt we will ever see harden getting into kobe’s face talkin noise again like he did earlier in the season. i don’t condone the action by artest but i do approve of the message it sends, the lakers aren’t bout to sit down and let dudes like james harden run their yaps.

  • Pais

    Harden moved in his path and puts up his arms to to initiate contact and perhaps take out a little bit of steam out of MWP’s celebration, and receives a disgusting, completely unjustified & unwarranted blow to the head. As someone else pointed out, I doubt MWP new what he was doing, while completely juiced on adrenalin and a good dose of irrational crazy, he was just reacting with violence in a sort of primitive unspecific way that ended up being what we all saw. Hope Harden will be ok, cause it could’ve been much worse and still has the potential to affect him long term.

  • http://espn.go.com/nba/ Paul H

    I think MWP DEFINITELY knew what he was doing…..He didn’t even look round! If you hit someone accidentally like that any decent person would be mortified and immediately turn to the persons aid. It was so blatant I feel sick that I ever defended him. The fact that he did It to James Harden makes It that much worse. I actually had more respect for him In the aftermath of the Mailice than after this.

  • 130623

    I’d ban him until next year at least! What a uneducated c*!t

  • Omar

    Damn, if Artest had a gun and shot him, some of y’all would blame Harden for walking into the bullet.

  • dfd

    @Omar and @Paul H
    Exactly, why everybody still defend artest (he doesn’t deserve MWP)
    If you hit a guy accidentally you will aware.
    And for people who said harden is blocking artest path, I wish he/she was who get elbowed.

  • Ali

    A few games, and lets keep it moving… It was an elbow, not a punch, kick, mid-air undercut, mid-air push, mid-air closeline, etc. Neither guy was looking at one another, Yes Ron has a history, we all know that, he let his emotions get the best of him after a nice play, Harden was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve seen worse on a NBA court, did any of ya’ll watch the NBA in the 80′s and 90′s! C’mon Son! Somebody call Vernon Maxwell or where’s Anthony Mason, Hahaha….

  • Heals

    Stay classy Los Angeles (Burgandy voice)…

  • http://slamonline.com Allenp

    Harden ran up to him and bumped him. Artest responded by swinging an elbow as if to say “Get off me.” It hit Harden in an incredibly dangerous place, a suspension is warranted, not sure of the duration but nothing excessive, and Mike Breen is more than just judgemental.

  • Geoff

    @Slick Ric: if you can’t tell the difference between Rose thrashing himself into the lane on a basketball play & Blake going in for an embarassing dunk, and Harden getting hit with an intentionally hurtful elbow for talking trash on a non-baasketball play then you’re simply an idiot. There is a reason you’re the only person comparing the situations.

  • G Money

    Its obvious that this was a malicious attack with the intent to hurt Harden. His celebration was pounding his chest, the elbow was purposeful. He could of cause major damage to Harden, the temporal bone can cause major trauma when hit. This isnt this idiot fraud of name “World Peace’s” first offense and it wont be his last. Hes bad for the game, hes a bad influence, hes “World Disgrace.” Get him out of here for good.

  • http://stapledesign.com Spaceship Jay

    In no way did Harden deserve to be elbowed. HOWEVER. However… There’s an old homeless woman who takes dumps on the sidewalk in front of one of my job sites. I see her; she sees me. I stay out of her way. I know Ron’s history. You know Ron’s history. Harden didn’t know Ron’s history? There was no other way to get to the ball other than through Ron? Ron’s apology was BS, clearly. But to quote Chris Rock- ‘He shouldn’t have did it…. But I understand.’

  • Kadavour

    Spaceship Jay – ftw! Attributing intent to this elbow is just as emotional a response as MWPs celebration after the dunk.

  • http://slamonline.com Slick Ric

    @jerkoff, so what, that don’t mean I’m wrong, that just mean you guys are hypocrites, that’s all. Dont say the nba is soft because its not physical and try to berate a guy for throwing cheap shots that everybody seems to love, Harden should be tougher right?

  • balher

    “Metta World Peace” No More

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