Orange County Register

Sitting here working on my Shannon Brown column and just finished watching Ron Artest’s spot on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Just gets more and more interesting to have Artest in our lives. It’s great, isn’t it?

Yes, he was on there without a shirt on the whole time and wearing just shorts that looked like boxers but he said weren’t. Yes, he had “Jimmy Kimmel Live” cut into the back of his hair, although he said he’d rid himself of it before facing the Knicks for fear of David Stern’s wrath. Yes, he actually said he hoped Kimmel didn’t think he was “weird.”

Artest disputed the story that he ran out of the team hotel in his underwear to catch the team bus to Staples Center last spring for a Rockets-Lakers playoff, explaining that the shorts looked like boxers but were just shorts with underwear underneath: “I wasn’t out there freeballin’,” he said.

That’s why he wore what he wore for his appearance on the show — to explain it all very visually.

Artest was his usual lively, unique self and obviously happy to be there. Kimmel said eventually: “Will you come back, like every week?”

And because Artest knew he’d successfully been his usual lively, unique self throughout the segment, he said about showing up for work in front of Phil Jackson the next morning: “He might be giving me a book tomorrow.”

(The YouTube video is the second part of Artest’s appearance. It’s the funnier half.) — JC

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