No, he’s not saying he was taken out of context. He still contends he did drink during his tenure with the Bulls. But there was a method to the madness: it was as a cautionary tale to youngsters about how he wasn’t proud of how immature he was when he first came into the league.

From ESPN Chicago:

“I think when the story comes out, it will show how I was not proud of how I was during my younger days in the NBA. But I think in order to get everybody interested in actually buying the paper, I think they just released all these power points, so to speak.”

Artest said Thursday during the interview that the drinking took place “a lot of times before the game. It probably lasted for about a couple weeks, or maybe a month. I can’t exactly remember.”

“I know before games, sometimes, I would take some sips before games,” he said. “Most of the time it would be like when I would drive to the game with one my drivers, it would be right before the game.”

“I was just a young player in the NBA; certain situations I only knew how to handle it one way,” he said during the radio interview. “I guess being famous, fame, not being able to handle it at such a young age, led to a lot of frustration and would lead to me making dumb decisions, such as the comment I made the other day.

“It’s something I’m not proud of. I know a lot of people in my situation, trying be successful, whether it’s education or athletics or even entertainment, that is not able to withstand the pressure that comes with it. That was my whole purpose in trying to get that story out about a month ago.”

“I definitely was not trying to get a rise out of people,” he said.

Holy blockquote, Batman!

So, um, yes: Ron Artest appears to have drank before games as well when he was a member of the Bulls. But hey, we all do dumb stuff when we’re 19, as Artest was when he was drafted by Chicago. He turned to it when he had nowhere else to turn because he didn’t know how to handle his fame at that age, he’s not proud of it, he’s over it.

Are we done with this now? I think we’re done with this now.

Yes, according to the latest edition of the Sporting News, he drank at halftime of some games during his 1999-2002 stint with the Bulls:

“I used to drink Hennessy … at halftime,” Artest says in the interview, which hits newsstands this week. “I (kept it) in my locker. I’d just walk to the liquor store (near the stadium) and get it.”

Two things here:

1) Does this surprise anybody? This is Ron Artest here. His entire NBA persona has been built around wild, outlandish stuff. He’s always been a wild child, a bit crazy.That’s what makes Ron Ron. If anything, this anecdote is just another piece that fits perfectly into the Ron Artest puzzle.

2) Shoals brings up a valid point in all of this. We clown Ron all the time, but when guys admit to serious mental health issues like Delonte West and Michael Beasley did this summer, we treated them with kid gloves.

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The Rockets made work of the Lakers 95-80 last night, knotting the series at three and sending it back to Los Angeles. Are the Rockets the only team that can lose their best two players and still challenge arguably the best team in the league? And how many enormous swings have there been in this series?

Anyway, after the game, prompted by who knows what — and something I don’t actually want to know, for fear of it ruining this awesome quote — Ron Artest had this to say:

“Five-dollar footlong is one of the best songs, that’s a hot song. You’ve got the freecreditreport.com, and then five-dollar footlong comes on. When five dollar footlong comes on, they should play that in the club. They should play all those in the club.”

This is identical to what I wrote a month ago: the five-dollar footlong song is really quite tremendous.

Just a hunch, but I have a feeling this is the only thing me and Ron-Ron have in common. Well, that and the hair.

Also See: TSB

Last night, Ron Artest puffed his pipe, set a few rascally reporters on his knee and spun quite a yarn. The video can be seen on Ball Don’t Lie (via Talk Hoops); I’ll post a partial transcript below.

I remember one time, it was um…one of my friends, you know, he was playing basketball, they was winning the game, they were so competitive, they threw a, um, they broke the … a piece of leg from a table and they threw it and it went right through his heart and he died.

No way, right? That’s Ron Artest for you. Always recounting tales about friends being impaled by furniture. Well … as it turns out, he was telling more than a colorful anecdote. From the April 15, 1991 New York Times:

A 19-year-old basketball player from Queens was fatally stabbed with a broken-off table leg today after a fight broke out during a basketball tournament, the police said.

The story notes that the player was stabbed by a 16-year-old. And Artest would have been 12 years old the night he witnessed this.

So this is New York City. Frank Sinatra and the Pace salsa commercials failed to warn me.