Ron Artest::Incident against the Detroit Pistons

Introducing Metta World Peace, or, the artist formerly known as Ron Artest. The story of Ron Artest is a long and winding one. A quick glance at a simple “Ron Artest” Google image search reveals as much. Some highlights include cracking the ribs of a certain basketball player during a recreational game. The player in question was a guy named Michael Jordan. You may have heard of him.

More famously, there’s the “Malice in the Palace” incident against the Detroit Pistons, which, among many other residual effects, may have derailed a championship-caliber basketball team. Then there’s the “retirement to produce records, er, about that” stuff. In fact, in order to properly document the travels of Ron, this particular article would be longer than a Bill Simmons retro diary.

Artest, to his credit, has repaired his image around following the Detroit incident, even befriending the fan who threw the cup that started the riot.

In fact, his turn around has been so complete, Artest was recently awarded the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award from the NBA for his work with mental health awareness. Artest himself has also become a lovable character, especially for NBA fans, if, for nothing else, than his silly, yet, sometimes bizarre antics. With that in mind, perhaps the name change shouldn’t come as a surprise, but then again, the name itself — Metta World Peace — is just too good to be true.

Obviously, the Twitter crowd feels the same, seeing how’s the not one, but two Ron Artest-related trends on the Worldwide Trends list.