Metta World Peace Drills Shot Over Melo, Serenaded with "MVP" Chants in MSG

On Monday night, a beloved NBA legend played his last game in his home arena.

Paul Pierce? No, that was TWO nights ago, and Pierce is a known and knowable quantity in every way, and so not legendary in the slightest. He scores points, he's sort of fat-muscular, he likes to kiss floors, everyone pretty much gets it at this point.

No, we speak in this time of Metta World Peace, known to some as The Panda Friend, Ron Ron, or the Warrior God of the Fieldhouse, and the only NBA player to promote his CD on the Today Show after getting in a massive brawl the night before. He was the NBA's 2004 Defensive Player of the year and remains the Legendary Hero, generational wing defender, and prince of Queens formerly known as Ron Artest.

Metta was in New York, land of his birth and the once and forever source of his eternal energy, biding his time as a mentor on the bench with the Los Angeles Lakers, who were two minutes away from wrapping up a blowout victory against the Knicks, when the crowd got restless. With five minutes remaining, the true believers left behind in the Garden began to stir.

"There's a chant of we want Metta." Mike Breen, who for some reason still calls Knicks games for MSG, intoned in his finest Sleepy Knicks Blowout voice. "There's a lot of Laker fans here tonight. Laker fans travel well."

"Theeeere's the former Ron Artest. Metta World Peace."

Walt "Clyde" Frazier chimes in: "Former Knick."

A few seconds of listless arena white noise. The crowd chatters.

"Quite a journey, his career. That's for sure," Breen said. "He was one of the few players, in 25 years covering the NBA, that I felt, other NBA players were scared of him." Breen and Clyde keep talking about Metta for a while, talking about his work for mental health advocacy and his personal struggle with the black dog.

The chanting resumes. "WE WANT METTA!" It is messy, disuniform, calling out from the dark corners of the rafters, disorganized and disjointed but also spirited and enthusiastic.

It is like Metta, who was in point of fact only a Knick for a few minutes, after the great work of his career was over. His has been a career spent drifting in the wind, his best years marred by an actual in-arena brawl, his remaining years consistent only in their inconsistency. The only institution to which he could feasibly be tied in a global sense isn't the NBA, or even a team at all, but the broader enterprise of New York basketball. Or, anyway, what remains of that weird old idea, which sometimes seems like it's only alive in Kenny Smith's biased-ass old memories.

Metta is about the same size as Paul Pierce, and had about the same level of base talent—a big part of basketball is defense, you will remember, and he was fucking amazing at it. But where Pierce was defined by a banal stability that got him an assload of points, a no-debate spot in the Hall of Fame and the inner circle of Celtics legend, Metta's eccentricity and intensity sent him all over the world, hunting for whatever fulfilled him moment to moment. That was at various times an escape from the past, a NBA title, a paycheck, and, eventually, just a spot on a bench where he could yell "I LOVE BASKETBALL" at the foul line and ride out to the end as one of the last players to have played in the halcyon days of the 1990s NBA. Even if traditional measurements and record books and Massachusetts museums might overlook him, Metta will be as remembered just as surely and just as fondly in his way as Pierce will be in his.

Metta's coach, Luke Walton, a former teammate who is his junior by five months, walks over to the bench and, presumably, asks if Metta wants in. He doesn't seem up to it at first, but the crowd roars on, this time in unity: "METT-A! METT-A! METT-A! METT-A!" Breen has one loaded. "The crowd, relentless. They won't let up. They want their world peace."

A timeout. Breen is going over the upcoming schedule. You hear the cheers. Metta enters. He picks up Carmelo. After all, he is a defender, and Melo is a scorer.

Two possessions elapse. Ron gets the ball in the corner. Metta is squaring off against Melo. The crowd cheers. He pumps, soaking it in a little bit. He dribbles into the right wing, takes a fadeaway, and drills it.

At this point, a normal great player would let that stand as his final Monument to Home. soak in the cheers and head for the exits. Metta does not do this. Instead he takes some foul shots when Brandon Jennings fouls to get out of the game, and also misses two more field goal attempts, one a three pointer from, like, six feet behind the line and the other a baseline fadeaway on the right wing that clanks against the side of the rim, just a breath after Clyde calls him one of the two best defensive player he's ever seen. It is a moment of pure truth, a perfect distillation of Metta/Ron/Whoever, forcing some chaos and fun into a moment that you wouldn't think called for it.

The Knicks lost 121-107.