Tuesday's Ring Night for All the Lakers Except Ron Artest

Tuesday night, a little after 7:00 p.m. at Staples Center, all of the Los Angeles Lakers will receive their 2009 NBA Championship rings.  That is, all of the Lakers except for one starter.

Ron Artest just joined the team as a free agent this past summer.  He will be looking on from the bench with eyes that have seen twelve NBA seasons go by without a ring for himself.

Those eyes will be looking on with envy and perhaps a great deal of determination.  The same determination that caused him to take a salary cut when he signed on as a free agent.

With Artest, it’s a matter of pride not money.  Long considered a defensive stalwart, he is arguably the best on-ball defender in the NBA.  Four times he has had as many as eight steals in a game.  Three times he has had four blocked shots in a game.

An NBA All-Star, Artest combines superb defense with timely scoring.  He has averaged 16.1 points per game over his career along with 3.2 assists.

The irony on Tuesday night will be that some five months ago Artest was trying to prevent the Lakers from getting those championship rings.  He was the heart and soul of a Houston Rockets team that battled the Lakers down to the wire in a Western Conference Semifinal Series that went to seven games.

No one had given the Rockets a chance, especially when their franchise player, center Yao Ming, went down with another foot injury that required surgery.  But Artest played the Lakers and especially Kobe Bryant as hard as he could.  

In fact, Artest went overboard.  He was ejected near the end of game two and fouled out of another game.  

It was the toughest series the Lakers would play during their championship run.

Another stroke of irony is that one of the players who contributed so much to the Lakers’ championship season won’t be at Staples Center to receive his ring.  

Trevor Ariza, a home-grown product of UCLA, is now in Houston.  He and Artest switched teams during free agency. 

After being part of the championship team, Ariza and his agent held out for slightly more money than the Lakers were willing to pay.

Artest, on the other hand, was willing to take a pay cut to get a shot at wearing one of those rings that his new teammates will be slipping on their fingers Tuesday evening.

While preseason statistic don’t really figure into how players will do once the grind of an 82-game schedule kicks in, here is how the two compared over the eight-game preseason.

Both Artest and Ariza appears in all eight of their teams’ games.

Ariza averaged 26.5 minutes, made 37.5 percent of his field goal attempts and 40.7 percent of his three-point shots and 69.9 percent of his free throws.  He grabbed 3.80 rebounds and dished out the ball for 2.4 assists and had 1.38 steals.  He averaged 10.9 points per game.

Artest averaged 25 minutes, made 39.6 percent of his shots and 25 percent of his three-pointers and 57.7 percent of his free throws.  He took down 4.30 rebounds and had 3.8 assists to go along with 1.25 steals.  He averaged 7.9 points per game.