When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [154]
Despite Artest's assertions that he wanted to finish his career with the Pacers and owed the fans and management a championship for standing behind him, it took all of 15 games for him to renege on his promise.
Artest announced that he needed a one-month sabbatical from basketball to work on and promote his new rap CD. It was a stunning act of selfishness that immediately put the franchise in a tail-spin—again.
"Ronny, what are you doing? I put myself on the line for you," Bird said to Artest.
"I know," Artest said. "That was cool."
One afternoon Artest timidly knocked on Bird's office door and slumped into the seat opposite his desk. He apologized profusely for letting his boss down and promised to be at practice, focused and ready.
Forty-eight hours later, he told coach Rick Carlisle he had changed his mind and was going to record the CD.
"I can always play basketball," Artest told Carlisle. "I can play basketball until I'm 50. But I've got to do this CD thing because I'm hot right now."
"Ronny," Bird said. "You are under contract to us."
Artest shrugged.
The conversation was over. There would be a dozen more just like it, but Bird had already made up his mind that the Pacers had to cut ties with their forward.
"Ron had no idea how badly he was hurting us," Bird said. "He couldn't see it."
Artest was placed on the inactive list and eventually shipped to the Sacramento Kings for shooter Peja Stojakovic. He was traded again in July 2008 to the Houston Rockets. A month before that swap, Artest came through Indianapolis to work out and ran into Bird on the practice court. He apologized for all the trouble he had caused and asked Larry to bring him back to the Pacers.
"Ron, how do you expect me to bring you back here after everything that's happened?" Bird said.
By then, Indiana had already traded Stephen Jackson to Golden State and was in the process of dealing Jermaine O'Neal to Toronto. They were going to have to start over, with a fresh approach and new faces.
Larry understood that he was dealing with a new breed of athlete. They were a different generation that wanted to carve out their own course, just as Bird did when he came to the NBA.
"But sometimes it was hard," Bird conceded. "You could see they were heading in the wrong direction, no matter how much you tried to help them."
Indiana began rebuilding around young swingman Danny Granger, who in his fifth season with the team in 2008–2009 was selected to play in the All-Star Game.
"We're on our way back," Granger said during All-Star weekend. "It's all about looking forward now."
While Bird's Pacers pointed to the future, Magic's Lakers were poised to make some noise in the here and now. Johnson took his role as the Lakers vice president seriously. He spent time talking with his players and sharing his experiences with superstar Kobe Bryant, who submitted an MVP year in 2007–2008 and quickly established the Lakers as the favorite to win the NBA crown.
The Celtics, meanwhile, had undergone some changes. After a wretched 24-win season in 2006–2007, Celtics boss Danny Ainge acquired veteran sniper Ray Allen. Then Ainge pried away former MVP Kevin Garnett from his friend, Minnesota general manager Kevin McHale, in a blockbuster deal that transformed Boston's prospects virtually overnight.
Bird (who earned the final say over personnel decisions when Walsh left the Pacers in 2007) inquired about Garnett's availability a week before the Timberwolves made the deal with the Celtics. At the time, McHale told Bird he didn't want to trade Garnett and the face of their franchise was content to stay put.
"So I called him back after the trade," Bird said. "I asked him, 'What changed?' He talked around and around it. Then it finally hit me. Kevin wasn't really making the final decision. I know he didn't want to part with Garnett. He was smart enough to know they'd never get enough in return. It probably came from up above."
With Garnett setting the tone in 2007–2008, the Celtics played lockdown defense, the best Bird had seen in a long