Metta World Peace has left us with no other choice. Not after that sequence late in the first half of Sunday’s game at the Staples Center: the elbow that dropped James Harden in a heap, the fighting stance as Harden’s Thunder teammates circled him in retaliation, the wide-eyed, unfocused expression that looked disturbingly familiar.
That has to be the last time we see him on an NBA court this season.
It doesn’t have to be the NBA that does the entire deed, although rarely has the league been as justified to throw the book at a player as it is today.
The suggestion here: Suspend him for the Lakers’ final regular-season game, of course, and then for their entire first-round playoff series, whether it’s a sweep or a seven-gamer.
If they advance, the Lakers are entitled to pick it up from there, and tell World Peace to sit out the rest of the playoffs. Suspend him or deactivate him; it’s just semantics. But he has to go.
They may or may not need him. But they absolutely can’t trust him.
He may have thrown away this second act of his NBA career. The Lakers can’t allow him to throw away the thin chance it still has to win a championship along with it.
It’s sad that World Peace’s career has taken this turn. Yes, sad. Save your anger for elsewhere in cyberspace; it won’t get a soft landing place here. Understandable as it is in light of what he did and how inexcusable it was, the anger has already gone way out of proportion.
Lifetime ban? The dirtiest thing they’ve ever seen in sports? Another lazy resurrection of the images from Auburn Hills, plus the accompanying “thug” talk?
Take a deep breath, click on the video of the Raffi Torres hit on Marian Hossa in the Stanley Cup playoffs last week, then pull yourself together. Even Kevin Love might agree that there have been more heinous things done by NBA players this season.
Yet Metta World Peace brought it on himself. The overreaction doesn’t happen without the action.
There is no player in recent memory who could afford to do what World Peace did to Harden less than he could. Nobody knew that more than him. His acknowledgment of responsibility for his actions and persona is well-documented. His transformation from Ron Artest—who was Public Enemy No. 1, and who was a danger to himself, his career and his future—was remarkable.
The collapse of that transformation is disappointing, on multiple levels. But ultimate success, or even quick success, was never a guarantee. Mental-health issues never are.
He is the guy who gave an on-court shout-out to his therapist seconds after winning his ring with the Lakers two years ago, and the guy who raffled that ring off the following season to raise half a million dollars for mental health charities. But he’s also the guy who, just last spring, got himself thrown out of a playoff game against Dallas, and suspended from the next game.
Just as he’s the guy whose post-game apology and tweets Sunday could be truly sincere and honest in his mind, he’s also the guy who, during the on-court chaos after the elbow, had that glazed, unhinged, not-completely-there look straight from the Auburn Hills aftermath.
In the NBA’s big picture, World Peace is a repeat offender. He’s put the league in a spot it shouldn’t have to be in, after all the good it never gets credit for, all the double-standards it’s had to fight since the Palace brawl, even after its self-inflicted wounds during the lockout.
World Peace has now inflicted wounds that the NBA had nothing to do with, but will pay a heavy price for.
Meanwhile, he’s also a repeat Lakers offender. With everything else perpetually swirling around them, they can’t afford more of last spring, or more of Sunday.
As responsible as he is to his own well-being, World Peace owed something to the NBA and his team, too. He let them all down.
In return, he needs to sit down. The NBA gets its chance first. The Lakers owe it to everybody to sit him the rest of the way.
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