A professional American Basketball player of National Basketball Association (NBA) has started his journey from Chicago Bulls and is continuing it with Los Angeles Lakers now.
He has played for around five teams in his career. His name is Ronald William Artest and is commonly known as Artest. He was born in Queens, New York on November 13, 1979. His Father Ron Artest Sr. was a Former Golden Gloves boxer and was an aggressive man.
He has transferred this trait in Artest Jr. When Artest was eight years old, his father had domestic problems with his mother. Ron was once taken to the therapist’s office and it was suggested by him the Artest’s problem is basketball. From that day onwards, Ron had a basketball in his hands and daily session of playing this game. Daily, he practiced it and daily he broke up with anyone over the game.
Ron Artest was also a rapper and he had faced many controversies in his professional career. The best about Ron Artest is that he plays every match of basketball with full zeal and zest as if he is giving his last performance while playing.
He is such a player who often had disputes with the others in the field. Most of the people do not like him because of his outspoken behavior.
His journey started from the initial days of playing at high school level. He was offered by many of the schools to play for them. Finally, Artest accepted the scholarship from St. John’s High School in 1997. Then in 1999, NBA Draft selected William Ron Artest in the Chicago Bulls. In this tenure, Ron Artest has played 175 matches till 2002.
Ron Artest has averaged 12.5 points with 4 rebounds per game in just two and a half years. Then, he joined Indiana Pacers and had spent a shining career time here. While playing with Indiana Pacers, Ron Artest was honored with the title of Defensive Player of the Year 2004. From 2003 to 2004, he averaged 18.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game.
Then, it was the time when Ron Artest had to suffer in his career because he had a brawl with the Pistons. Actually, Ron has fouled and the game was about to be over that one of the Pistons had hit him and also thrown a cup of Diet Coke over him. Artest became furious over it and punched even a Pistons fan as he was verbally misbehaving with him.
The result of this brawl was the suspension of Ron Artest for the rest of the season. He has missed playing 73 matches and was even banned by NBA for his salary. It was the longest period of suspending a player by NBA. Besides this many of the players were also charged and even some of the fans were banned to watch the basketball in the court for their whole life. In the initial months of 2005-06, he joined Indiana Pacers again but soon on January 4, 2006; Ron Artest has finalized the contract of playing for Sacramento Kings by the negotiations with the Pacers.
Then, it was tenure of Ron Artest with Sacramento Kings for the year 2006-08. Here, he has rendered his services so well that the performance of the Kings was improved and was remarkable for the whole season.
Then, he was caught because of flagrant foul and Kings were banned to play for the further six matches of the series. It was heard that Ron Artest is going to be traded off with Houston Rockets by the Sacramento Kings. Eventually, he joined Houston Rockets and played in this team for a year (2008-09). Then he was drafted by Los Angeles Lakers and is still playing in this team.
He is also a rapper and had released an album of Discography with the name of “My World”. HE has also declared in 2010 that he will donate partially or fully the sum of his salary of 2011 for the mental health awareness charity programs.