You ask almost anyone about Metta World Peace and they’ll tell you his name doesn’t quite suit him. The veteran basketball player is known for being a dirty player from the elbow incident with James Harden to much more; but in his mind he’s just aggressive. Read more after the jump.
Metta World Peace is not upset with the NBA for retroactively upgrading a hit he had on the Denver Nuggets’ Kenneth Faried to a flagrant-2 foul. But he is skeptical of Denver coach George Karl for mistaking his aggressive play as being dirty.
“George Karl knows, come on,” World Peace said after the Los Angeles Lakers’ practice Saturday. “He’s been in this NBA longer than me. Come on, he knows the era of basketball.”
By “era of basketball,” World Peace was referring to the NBA he grew up watching from the Detroit Pistons “Bad Boys” to the Miami Heat and New York Knicks playoff series in the ’90s that resembled wrestling matches.
“As I get older, I’m learning how to just play hard,” World Peace said. “It’s not like I brought this aggression to the league. I didn’t invent this. This is what we watched, this is what we saw. The Bill Laimbeers and the [Dennis] Rodmans, they play hard and they wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. They played hard. They played with passion. We grew up wanting to play with passion. So, when the guys say we’re dirty, we’re just playing hard. We’re not playing dirty. We’re just playing. We’re reacting. We’re going hard. We want to win.”
I understand what World Peace is saying. Basketball now has gotten pretty much soft. They call almost everything and there’s no room to be aggressive and play real defense. I often hear people longing for the 90’s style of play and it looks like World Peace is one of them.
