Dammit, Testy, You're Better Than That

A week after Mike Bibby and his overrated but still competent self was sent out of town for a big pile of nothing...

Ron Artest has gone back on his claim from earlier this month that the Kings "would be better if I wasn't on the team."

Testy is making $7.4 million a year, which seems like a bargain -- hell, that's Bobby Sura money. Unfortunately, he's wildly overrated, a bad percentage shooter, a below-average rebounder despite his (likely roid-addled) physique and a team poison that could murder everyone on the team in their sleep, with no one in the media or NBA fandom doing much more than saying "Damn, I had April in the pool."

So what's he saying now? Hold on to your hats. Sactown, despite being clearly lottery-bound, is getting a parade!

"I am anxious to see what my future holds, [but] I like Sac," Artest wrote in an e-mail. "My entire focus is with Sac and winning a championship this year."

Well, far be it from me to cast aspersions on the Tru Warier's commitment. He's given up rap, disappointing thousands of fans of unintentional comedy. He hasn't beaten his chest like King Kong, prompting an ejection, for, like, days. He's got the back of his coach, former sitcom star Reggie Theus, who calls him the go-to guy on the team. (That sound you just heard was Kevin Martin calling his agent, looking for a trade.) Everything is coming up Testy!

Except for the fact that... the Kings are 23-28, 5 games under .500, and 8.5 games out of the last playoff spot in the West. That's currently a 3-way dance between the 32-20 Warriors, Rockets and Nuggets -- three teams with vastly superior talent, coaches and fan bases, given that Testy in Sactown is a Fish Out of Water script that Disney would reject as being too unrealistic to grunt out a movie from. That massive home-court advantage the Kings used to enjoy? Not so much now.

They'd also have to finish above Portland, who actually have team chemistry, let alone talented young players. And, well... Sactown just traded their starting point guard in an obvious give-up move for the future, and they've made no indication that they want more of Testy after this year. Given that the team has made no real move forward since he came there, you can hardly blame the Maloofs for not exactly rolling out the Chris Webber contract for the Warier.

If this were any NBA player other than Testy, I'd think he was just saying the right thing to help grease the wheels for the next trade. But this is the biggest heel in the Association we're talking about here, a guy who Dennis Rodman thinks is unhinged. You aren't going to deal for him under the idea that he's turned over a new leaf. You'd pull the trigger for him if you are getting killed defensively at small forward, have nothing to lose, and have a tried-and-true clubhouse that might stand a chance of keeping him in line. You know, the way the Bulls (and not the Mavs or Spurs) won with Rodman. Under those criteria, maybe the Spurs go for him in the Stephen Jackson Memorial Role, but only if they think Bruce Bowen is ready for the glue farm. Maybe the Pistons could also pull him off, except for the fact that Tayshaun Prince is the same player, but better.

The point is that no one is buying the Nice Testy act. He might as well keep his rep alive and show up to practice with a suicide bomb belt and a timer clock until the trade deadline.

Besides, at the end of the day, we all know there is only one place for Testy to be -- the same place that was rumored last March. New York, for David Lee, so that both teams could have More of the Same.

The Incredibly Irrelevant New York Knicks would become Must Destroy Your TV watching with Testy. Watching him try to take shots away from the rest of these me-first maniacs, seeing his reactions to Isiah's bizarro-land coaching decisions, having him get in the grill of no-defense big men like Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph in his occasional bouts of caring about winning and losing...

Well, it'd be entertaining, in the way that a train wreck becomes infinitely more captivating when, after the bodies have stopped twitching and the moaning has subsided, smoke and fire start to appear, and you know Big Explosions are going to happen. One of the few always-true points about life is that so long as it's present, it can get worse... and Testy in his hometown, with that roster, fan base and coach, is almost like a science experiment of awful. Come on Isiah, ignore Testy's not-completely bloated salary and the sense of self-preservation that fills most people when they are in the presence of homicidal nutbags. Get it done!