Metta World Peace is quite the loquacious one lately. A day after delivering some hilarious comments about Jeremy Lin, World Peace came out with some strong words for Lakers coach Mike Brown. Metta is particularly upset about being benched late in games when he feels he shouldn’t be.
“I’m trying to win,” World Peace told CBS Sports’ Ken Berger. “And right now, coach is a stats guy. His background is video coordinator or whatever. So he’s all stats. But Ron Artest is all feel. He doesn’t understand that. Having me in the game at the end, he was worried about me shooting bad from the free throw line. And I was like, ‘I could care less because I’m gonna get a stop at the end of the game.’ He didn’t understand the rhythm that we had — me, Fish [Derek Fisher], Kobe [Bryant], Pau [Gasol] and Drew [Andrew Bynum]. I’ve been through games where I would have two points, go 1 for 9 and we’d win. That’s what matters. Stats are for people who need stats.”
Metta, or Ron Artest as he called himself, says the team won in Boston with him on the floor but lost to Utah and and Philly when he was on the bench late. He thinks that should overshadow his atrocious shooting on the season (he’s making just 16% of his threes), explaining that what he does well doesn’t show up in the box score.
“If I could count how many times another team went away from the best player when I was on him, I’ve got to be like No. 1 in the league,” World Peace said. “That’s not a stat, and coach doesn’t … you would have to play basketball to feel that. When Phil Jackson was here, that’s why I was in the game, because he understands that. Philly and Utah, I was on the bench because of stats.
“Every game on the road is gonna be close,” he said. “But I think they panic a little bit when the games get close. But me, Kobe, Pau, Fish, we expect the games to be close. We expect to pull them out, and we don’t panic. And coach, he panicked a little bit: ‘I need to make a change.’ So I just sit on the bench and wait and see what happens.”
Coach Brown hasn’t responded yet but it will be very interesting to see what he says. World Peace made some very valid points that Brown should consider. The only issue is that these are points he should have raised with Brown and the coaches instead of voicing it to the media. Then again, if he has already made these points to Brown and not received the response he wanted, maybe this was the best way to go.
H/T I am a GM
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