From my venerable archives (11/14/04)
Hmm, the Kings need to shake something up, obviously, and Ron Artest is a quality player, but seems a little 'tightly wound' to fit in to the vaunted (or previously vaunted anyway) Kings clique. On the other hand, Brad Miller and Artest played together on the Chicago Bulls for a season or two, and were traded to Indiana together, so who knows? Seems like Miller and Artest were good friends. Could be interesting.From the Detroit FreePress: Artest is ridiculous, but so was ESPN - 11/14/04:
The Indiana Pacers and the Sacramento Kings have been talking about a straight-up Artest for Peja Stojakovic trade. Stojakovic, unhappy and feeling alienated by his teammates in Sacramento, is merely going through the motions, averaging 13 points. The Kings are in the same position as the Pacers. They know they are going to have to trade one of their All-Star players.Expect this trade to happen fairly soon.
Took the Pacers a while (over a year), but apparently the deal has gone down today.
Stojakovic has been 'mailing it in' nearly all year, for whatever reason (missing Vlade Divac's jokes, injured, whatever), so I'm not surprised this trade happened (if it in fact does happen). I had thought Adelman would lose his job first though.
Or not. Terry Porter just mentioned in a live interview that perhaps Ron Artest aka Tru Warior (sic) doesn't want to play in Sacramento because they have too free-flowing of an offense. Negotiations continue however. Marty Burns concurs.
But then, of course, it turns out the agent of Ron Artest (Mark Stevens) was the road block, and after consulting directly with Artest, and much fulmination in the sports media/sports blogs, the deal was consummated with Cohibas for all.
One source involved in the inner workings of the deal suggested that agent Mark Stevens was the person most opposed to the trade because it would preclude Artest from earning any of the endorsement money from companies embracing street cred that might have been available to him in a larger market.The absurd notion of Artest somehow being a marketable commodity at this point in his career helps show the degree of delusion under which Artest's advisers sometimes operate, but Artest long ago replaced a much more established agent, Mark Bartelstein, with the less-experienced Stevens. Bartelstein continues to collect a percentage of Artest's salary, while Stevens won't be in position to earn a similar commission until Artest decides whether to opt out of his contract following the 2007-08 season.
“It wasn't combative, but it wasn't positive,” Gavin Maloof said of the phone call from agent Mark Stevens that ended up causing a 24-hour delay in finalizing the deal. “They weren't on the same page. We spoke to Ron and he was very positive. He told me he wants to play basketball, he wants to be here. That's all I know.”
Tags: Basketball, /NBA
I just blogged about it and think it's a great trade for the Kings.
Yeah, I'm more gung-ho than last year (a scant 6 days before the Riot in Detroit).