A Not So Colorful Artest Is What LA Needs

Ron Artest's hairdos are starting to become nonsense for the Los Angeles Lakers.

He busted out his first hairdo against Orlando back in late March and was humiliated on the defensive end by Vince Carter. The next day that hair was gone.

Fast forwarding to the first round of the playoffs, Artest again had a hairdo and vowed to be colorful during the playoffs. But that plan seems to have changed.

That hair was gone in game five of the series and came out a hungry nastier looking Artest with a game face saying "don't mess with me." As a matter of fact Artest and Kobe Bryant's game face's look very similar when Artest does not have his colorful hair.

Once Artest shaved off his colorful hairdo, the entire Lakers team looked nastier by just looking at them on the court. Gone were the weird cartoony looking Lakers that didn't seem to have any sort of urgency to win a game.

Artest and Bryant both tagged teamed and formed a formidable 1-2 punch on defense by taking on the Thunder's two best players starting the day Artest decided to get rid of his hairdo. 

Ever since Artest shaved off his hairdo, he has the begun to look like the Artest the Lakers signed over the well-liked Trevor Ariza. Artest has upped his offensive production averaging 11.5 points a game and upped his long range shooting from 13 to 33 percent. If this trend continues Artest can definitely end up at least matching Ariza's efficient 48 percent three point shooting from last year.

Defensively, Artest has added a dimension that the Lakers severely lacked last season. From the start of the series, Artest made Kevin Durant's life a misery with physicality. Ariza was quick, long and athletic and constantly made huge stops for the Lakers last year but he wasn't what Artest has brought.

With the resurgent looking Artest teaming with Bryant to stop the opposition the Lakers have arguably two of the top five defenders in the league. If somehow the opposition gets by one of those two they have the long Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol to meet at the rim.

The mean and nasty Artest is giving the Lakers the makeup of a great defensive team. The Lakers held the Thunder to well under 100 points in five out of the six games.

Hopefully for the Lakers the mean and hungry looking game face of Artest will continue to show up for the rest of the way. Hopefully Artest will also not revert back to the cartoony looking hair that makes the Lakers look cartoony on the court. Hopefully they will continue to look like the defensive juggernauts they have become.