Elbow that shook the world
Nope, that is not a headline about Syria. If it was it would be much more bleak. Speaking of which, go read some international news, it is actually important. Anyway, Metta World Peace, formerly known as Ron Artest, has been suspended by the NBA for seven games.
The suspension, which should shock no one, was handed down by the league after World Peace, after a left handed dunk in the game between the Lakers and Thunder, became demonstrative in his celebration which concluded with an elbow to the head of James Harden. Harden was forced to leave the game with concussion-like symptoms and did not return. World Peace was ejected.
With the NBA’s ruling that World Peace will be suspended for seven games, the Lakers lose a valuable member of their rotation that has been playing well as Kobe Bryant sat to recover from injury as the playoffs approached. The Lakers have only one regular season game remaining so the next time that World Peace could see playing time would be if the Lakers were to play a game seven against their first round opponent in the playoffs. That is, of course, if the Lakers do not advance to the second round sooner.
Los Angeles currently holds the third seed in the Western Conference and are slated to play (as of the evening of April 24) the Denver Nuggets in the first round as they hold a half game lead over the Dallas Mavericks.
As many were looking for blood, citing World Peace’s past forays into misconduct, Mark Followill points out that this is a rather long suspension for such an act via Twitter:
So Ron-Ron gets 7 games. No prob w/ it. Altho to reiterate, its an unheard of suspension length in NBA for this type incident
and he continues:
7 game suspensions are typically for fighting, run-ins w/ officials or off court transgressions. The hammer definitely came down hard here
It is harsh penalty but the media storm that was created had an effect on the length of the suspension.
World Peace has released a statement concerning his suspension on his website stating:
“I apologize to the Oklahoma City Thunder fans and the OKC organization. I look foward [sic] to getting back on the floor with my teammates and competing for the Lakers fans.”
