Artest cut from playoffs, hair cut from head.
It’s official. Ron Artest, the maligned forward for my beloved Indiana Pacers, will not be back this year. David Stern has officially closed the door on a playoff return, saying…
“At a certain point in the last week or two we decided the most important thing here is Ron’s return to the NBA and the best path for that is through a program in which he’s now engaged,”
Stern also said, to the Indianapolis Star…
“Our goal is to do everything we possibly can to ensure Ron’s return to the NBA next season is as smooth as it can possibly be,”
and…
“There’s a lot of things we’re participating in to that end and we’re confident he’ll be back as a contributing member of the Pacers and the NBA next season.”
*sigh* While I didn’t think Artest should have come back, I always had a glimmer of hope that he would, and personally, as a fan, I wouldn’t have been too upset with that. Now, with no possible Artest return and Jermaine O’Neal out for pretty much the rest of the season, it looks like the Pacers, who have won 5 of 8 without O’Neal, are done. Officially done. They’ll make the playoffs, face the Heat, and lose in four games.
That sucks. This was supposed to be the year that Reggie got his title, retiring after the NBA Finals just like David Robinson did, knowing that he finally brought the team to a winning status and that he could retire knowing that he was a champion. Now, while nobody sees him as a loser – his career wasn’t defined by a title hunt, like Karl Malone’s was – he’s still going to have the stigma of “never won a championship” over his head. And that’s really too bad.
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As an aside, tonight I cut my hair. Short, probably. It will be weird.
The thing I don’t want to deal with, and one of the main reasons I’d never had it chopped off before now, is that everyone is going to make a big deal about it. I don’t want people to make a big deal about it – I wouldn’t even mind if nobody said anything at all about my haircut – but I know that when someone who’s had long hair for along time cuts it, it is a big deal. I’ll just have to get over it, I guess.
At least I don’t have to work tomorrow – I’ll at least have time to get used to it myself before everyone else has to start getting used to it.