Paging Kobe and Artest From the Department of Sore Losers

Well, it looks like the Lakers have finished toying around with the Rockets in the Western Conference semis, and Thursday's Game 6 will likely spell the end for a feisty Houston team that is too inconsistent to win without Yao Ming in the middle.

And since I can't stand the Lakers, I'm turning to my basest desires to bring me joy: Here's hoping that Ron Artest clocks the living hell out of Kobe Bryant.

Artest is all kinds of crazy, and he and Kobe have been yammering back and forth throughout the series.

I thought Ron-Ron was going to lose it in Game 2, when Kobe threw a cheap-shot elbow right into his throat and then pretended like he did nothing wrong. But Artest merely got ejected, and the series went on without further incident.

Now, however, I can see Artest, fed up with what I'm sure will be a relatively easy Laker win, losing his marbles.

How delicious would it be to see Artest (trying to keep alive the classic 90s look of words and patterns in your hair) give that smug bastard Kobe the business end of a cheap shot.

Bryant has always been a punk, yet his prodigious talents have given him a free pass for a large part of his reprehensible on-court behavior (I'm not even talking about the Colorado business): running Shaq out of town, feuding with Phil Jackson, virtually ignoring his teammates, sporting prison-quality tattoos, whining nonstop to the refs, etc.

No one has ever really put him in his place. If all goes right tonight, I'm hoping Artest does the job.

Yeah, it's a "bad" thing to wish for, but c'mon, all you non-Laker fans are probably thinking it too.