Metta World Peace blames low minutes for not scoring '15 or 20' points last season
Metta World Peace wants to be back in the NBA as an active player. Makes sense; the salary cap has shot up, and the NBA lifestyle is a swank one even on the end of the bench. Von Wafer wants back in, so does Ben Gordon, Flip Murray too, and even Derek Fisher (who won a championship with MWP in 2010) might take your call.
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What’s a little Metta World Peace-like is his estimation that he could have been not only a double-figure scorer, but perhaps one of 20 players to average over 20 points per game in the NBA last season.
While at an appearance supporting his brother’s Artest Foundation, MWP spoke with ESPN’s Ian Begley:
So is the NBA on the back burner right now?
Metta World Peace: No, the NBA’s always on the front burner.
Are you still planning to play next season?
Metta World Peace: Absolutely. The NBA is always on the front burner.
Are you talking with teams right now?
Metta World Peace: I’m waiting for teams. I can still play. I can play, it’s not even a question man. But, you know, sometimes you don’t get in the game, man. What are you going to do? I’m not going to be upset, I’m going to support. So if I don’t play, like this year on the Lakers I could have averaged 15 or 20 on the Lakers if I played, easily.
When Metta World Peace signed a non-but-eventually-guaranteed deal with the Lakers in 2015, it was a bit of a surprise. He had spent the entire 2014-15 season playing in China and Italy, and was an afterthought on the 2013-14 New York Knicks the season before. Still, MWP seemed like a solid end of the bench voice for a very young Laker team, while acting as a familiar face in the locker room for what would turn out to be Kobe Bryant’s last season in the NBA. This is why it wasn’t a massive surprise.
He did not play well, though, in limited minutes. When World Peace was afforded extra time on the court, he did play solid enough basketball (if you’ll allow the reach), but overall the numbers for the 36-year old were not encouraging. The former Ron Artest averaged five points and 2.5 boards in 17 minutes a game, missing more than half the season due to a series of Did Not Play – Coach’s Decision, shooting 31 percent along the way.
With 2015-16 winding down and the Lakers long out of the playoff hunt on its way toward a 17-win season, Metta was already looking forward to an NBA career beyond that lost season. He spoke openly to the press about what he considered standout play when he was given extended floor time, and copped to wanting to play “a couple more years.”
In five starts, World Peace averaged 8.6 points and 2.2 rebounds in 24 minutes a night. The night he played his largest minutes allotment – 27, in a loss to Orlando – he contributed nine points and two boards. In his next three-highest contests in terms of minutes per game, he missed 23 of 30 shots.
His season-high in points came in a late-season loss to the Clippers, where he hit for 17 points on 5-10 shooting. He averaged 10.7 points per 36 minutes overall. It’s true that players’ per-minute scoring goes up the more minutes they’re given per game, but that’d be quite the jump to “15 or 20” – and MWP hasn’t averaged over 36 minutes since 2007-08, when he was a Sacramento King.
This isn’t exactly the resume of someone who, at age 37, could average “15 or 20” (“easily,” no less) on yet another 17-win team next season. Much less the sort of team that MWP would seemingly want to sign with – a playoff-bound squad. Metta pined last March about wanting to go out after working in the postseason just one more time – a place he hasn’t been since 2013.
He also – as someone who was labeled a future megastar during his AAU and high school days and upon his entrance to St. John’s – has lamented his potential wasting of what could have been a Hall of Fame career.
Metta World Peace has long considered himself on par with the game’s greatest stars, with the caveat given that had he not spent so much time concentrating on defense (he won the Defensive Player of the Year award in 2004 and made the All-Defense first or second team four different times) that he would have been able to score at will like so many of his contemporaries in terms of age. He wants to play as long as Kobe and Tim Duncan did, and for as long as Dirk Nowitzki and Kevin Garnett will.
Instead, his slowly-developing offensive games and, um, “quirks” led to him dropping out of the lottery and to the No. 16 pick in the 1999 draft. By the time he made his only All-Star Game in 2004, his ascension was almost considered to be the work of a gritty, unheralded-type, instead of the obvious placement for someone who was considered a can’t-miss future star at age 17.
This is why it’s understandable that he’d want to go out on better terms. Not shooting 31 percent on a team that had the worst record in its conference.
Claiming that he could post and hook (the offensive foul, not the shot) his way to an easy “15 or 20” points per game, however, is probably not the best way to seek out that next contract.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
