Ron Artest: Good Basketball Player, Mediocre Man of Letters

On Friday I linked to an open letter to Ron Artest at the Second Coming blog. Blogger Kyle Slavin had written about his own devotion to the Lakers, and expressed both excitement and a little worry at the presence of Artest. Included was a kind of warning: You better do well. If you do, we'll love you. If not, we are Laker fans, and we can ruin you. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the basic gist. I linked with the conviction that Slavin was speaking for many Laker fans. ("You better not screw this up," is a common sentiment, for instance, in the comments and blog posts on the Laker blog Forum Blue and Gold.) This is a title-winning team with dynastic thoughts. There was just about nothing wrong with Trevor Ariza. But now they have Artest instead. Could be a total highlight! I suspect it will work. But I can understand that it might feel just a little like, say, turning a brahma bull loose in the Louvre. That bull would rival the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo as the ...