104949102Ron Artest, who will take on the name Metta World Peace in a few short weeks, has been in the news quite a bit lately for reasons unrelated to basketball. In addition to the name change, he'll be a contestant on "Dancing with the Stars" this fall, where he'll probably dress in funny clothes and do bizarre routines just like he does in everyday life.

Sometimes, though, Artest thinks about basketball. In fact, he recently predicted that the Lakers will win a championship this season, should the playoffs even happen in 2012. From Mark Medina for the Los Angeles Times:

But Artest guaranteed to ESPN Los Angeles' Stephen A. Smith in a 40-minute interview Wednesday that the Lakers will again pop the champagne bottles after winning the 2012 NBA title. Assuming there's a season of course.

"Win it all," Artest said when asked what will the Lakers do in the 2011-2012 season. "Win the whole thing. That's a guarantee." [...]

Smith then asked what can the general public do to Artest should his guarantee go sour.

"We're going to win," he answered. "You can do anything you want to do. Whatever you want to do, you do it."

Cool, I guess if the Lakers don't win the championship we are all going over to the World Peace villa for a night of decadent debauchery. See you there! I'll be the one wearing a monkey mask.

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Ever since the lockout became official on July 1, fans have been grasping for any sort of positive news. There's been so much posturing and double-talk that it's been difficult to pretend that things are going to get better soon. By all indications so far, the loss of a full season seems like a real possibility.

On Wednesday, fans got a glimmer of hope when David Stern and the Players Association met for collective bargaining talks. No specific details have emerged from the sixth-hour meeting. However, that lack of post-meeting media spin can be considered a positive in itself. Here's what Howard Beck of The New York Times reported on Twitter from the scene:

Derek Fisher emerges from 6hr bargaining session, declines to characterize talks. But sides will keep meeting. #lockout

Fisher also said parties agreed to dispense with the rhetoric and public shots at each other. All positive signs, IMHO.

More meetings are scheduled, but parties will not specify when and where. 

Stern and Silver

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Like most of the Lakers, Pau Gasol had a pretty unimpressive playoffs. In 10 games against the Hornets and Mavs, he averaged 13.1 ppg on just 42 percent shooting from the field. Worse yet, he seemed to be playing with little fire and determination. For a player who was deemed one of the two or three best big men in the league during the 2010 playoffs, it was a notable fall from grace.

This summer, Gasol is part of the stacked Spain squad at the European Championships. Winning the tournament would help his reputation, even if EuroBasket isn't the biggest stage in America. Still, Gasol isn't putting too much pressure on himself to perform well as a way of atoning for his playoff failures. From Ben Bolch for the Los Angeles Times (via PBT):

In the playoffs last spring Gasol and the Lakers were run ragged by Nowitzki's Dallas Mavericks. The Lakers power forward was also besieged by unsubstantiated rumors of a rift with his girlfriend, and was the subject of finger-pointing by fans disappointed with his play, and a jab to the chest by coach Phil Jackson during the Western Conference semifinal sweep.

"I do not think there's anything to prove on my side," Gasol said via email when asked if he was eager to put the Lakers' postseason behind him. "Last season we didn't perform during the playoffs as we were supposed to. . . . You cannot win every year; there are a lot of very good teams in the league."

The typical American sports narrative is that a disgraced player should come back from disappointment with a fanatical devotion to improve his game and make himself more impressive in the eyes of the sporting public. Gasol, to his credit, is taking a more measured approach.

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When it comes to the upper class of fandom, Clipper Darrell is perhaps the king of kings. Rooting on a team that's given him little to cheer for, he nevertheless makes ridiculous amounts of noise, wears a blue-and-red suit, and generally reps for a franchise that does not deserve a fan of his loyalty. I mean, it even sold his seats for one game this year. That's like telling Wavy Gravy he can't hang out on stage at a Grateful Dead show.

Understandably, Darrell is upset at the prospect of not having any NBA games to attend this year. Not surprisingly, he has plans to show the Clippers and the NBA how much he cares. Except, unlike most protesters, he is going to take things lying down. Because he's going to stage a sleep-in at Staples Center (puns!). From Larry Brown Sports, a site that is sadly not run by the former NBA coach (via EOB):

Clipper Darrell first mentioned the sleepover protest on his twitter account August 16th. "I WANT BASKETBALL BACK!! The LA Clippers finally get a superstar & now it's an NBA lockout. I WILL SLEEP @STAPLES starting OCT.1 ..are u in?" Clipper Darrell wrote. He's been running a countdown to the sleepover, mentioning it every few days. He's even trying to recruit other people to join him "All NBA fans arena & restaurant employees camera people & anybody else this affects on Oct 1 protest lockout sleep over Staples Center."

Darrell says he won't leave Staples Center until the lockout ends but I don't buy it. What he doesn't realize is that this is going to go on through at least the end of the year. No way he goes Ghandi on everyone and remains at Staples for months — it's just not going to happen.

I would not be so sure, Larry Brown. Darrell is fiercely committed to his cause, enough so that he would sleep outside a basketball arena for an entire year to prove a point. Sure, things might get weird on nights when the NHL's Los Angeles Kings play, but Darrell can hold his own in those situations.

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If you walk around a random three-block area of the greater Los Angeles area, you are likely to see at least one Kobe Bryant jersey. He is the current icon of the city's sporting scene, a figure who will go down as at least as important in LA sports history as Magic Johnson, Tommy Lasorda, and Luc Robitaille. The man owns the town and can do no wrong.

Still, Kobe's King of LA designation was earned, not a birthright. His only tie to the city is the Lakers, not the deeper basketball subculture at summer pro-am competitions like the Drew League.

Like many NBA players, Kobe has taken advantage of the lockout to play in the Drew League -- he even hit a notable game-winner over James Harden two weeks ago. Still, not every LA basketball personality has welcomed Kobe to the league with open arms. Brandon Jennings, a Compton native and current Milwaukee Bucks point guard, says Kobe shouldn't appear at Drew League events. From Mark Medina for the Los Angeles Times:

If Kobe Bryant agrees to play in a proposed Drew League-Goodman League rematch, thousands of L.A. fans would flock to wherever the game takes place. And if he does, it appears Milwaukee Bucks guard Brandon Jennings would go on his own "birther" campaign, like Donald Trump did with President Barack Obama.

"He wasn't born and raised in L.A," Jennings told ESPN the Magazine's Chris Palmer regarding Bryant, who attended Lower Merion near Philadelphia. "You gotta be from L.A. for Drew. Show me a birth certificate." [...]

Don't mistake Brandon's gripes about Bryant as a personal attack, though. Even though the Compton native would benefit from playing alongside Bryant, his gripes point more to his belief that the Drew League is compromising its roots in representing L.A. players. Jennings, after all, reiterated to Palmer the same thing he told me at the 2010 ESPY awards.

After the jump, check out the anti-Kobe shirt Jennings sent out from his Twitter account last week. Someone is clearly not a big fan of the Black Mamba.

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For the past few weeks, it was heavily rumored that Lakers forward Ron Artest, the soon-to-be Metta World Peace, would be a contestant on the hit ABC series "Dancing with the Stars." In case you're unfamiliar, "DWTS" (as it's known to those of us in the know) is a combination variety and reality show in which marginal celebrities like Lil Romeo and Hall of Fame athletes such as Jerry Rice perform various ballroom dances for the pleasure of old people and, occasionally, Sarah Palin.

Rumors of Artest's involvement were so heavy that it was widely assumed he'd be involved in the cast announcement during Monday night's episode of the human petri dish "Bachelor Pad." However, earlier in the afternoon, Ron-Ron tweeted that he was not doing the show because he had to work on his new single (via PBT). Obviously, a man cannot dance when he needs to make a song that will implore others to get down and boogie.

That tweet has since been deleted. Because, as you can read at Yahoo!'s own OMG! blog, Artest was in fact announced as one of this season's contestants:

Actress and former talk show host Ricki Lake, Laker Ron Artest (who took his shirt off after his name was revealed), Wilson Phillips singer Chynna Phillips, former "The Hills" reality star Kristin Cavallari, actor David Arquette, and fashion expert Carson Kressley were the first names revealed on Monday night.

The season premiere is Sept. 19, only three days after Artest's name change is set to take place. He will dance as the living embodiment of global freedom and prosperity, just as it was meant to be.

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At this point, seemingly half the NBA is on Twitter. It's a wild world of training updates, questions as to which movies they should go see, and explanations of their Call of Duty prowess. Every so often, though, you also get a picture into the more interesting aspects of NBA life. This feature is your window into that world.

Blake Griffin: Shout out to the dude in the hummer on the 405 who just flipped off an old lady for no reason. The devil is smiling. #LA

Kevin Love: Interesting question posed in class. In context of American popular culture, who would YOU put on your cultural Mt. Rushmore?

Nazr Mohammed: The only players that can get away with buying homes where they play are the franchise players. Better chances of being there long term. … I learned my lesson... Didn't listen to my financial advisor 2x's and bought a house where I played and lost big both x's. #RealtorWasHappy

Jameer Nelson: OMGoodness. This laday next to me on the plane has a bunch of Fried fish and

By the '90s, All-Star Weekend was a mainstay of the NBA. Fans had eaten up the dunk contest, 3-point contest, and all manner of hijinks during the '80s, and things were only going to improve.

This video from 1990s All-Star Saturday in Miami suggests that they were still working out some of the kinks. Not only did they curiously introduce every All-Star on live TV when the game itself took place the next day, but they also made them walk down a giant-shoe staircase to an "It Takes Two" remix that contains all the cliches of late-'80s/early-'90s rap.

On the other hand, this video is worth watching for several reasons. Like, say, the fashions of the era, including Dominique Wilkins' hilarious high-fastening pants and Dennis Rodman in normal clothes. Or, I don't know, hard-to-find highlights of Tom Chambers and Fat Lever.

The true piece de resistance, though, is what has to be the only available highlight of Chris Mullin dunking on an opponent. Clips like that one just don't come along