One of the most interesting people I’ve ever met on my basketball journey is Ron William Artest Jr., my mercurial, bruising, small forward of a friend. I’ve always gotten along great with Ron, but if you’re familiar with his controversial NBA career, you’ll understand when I say that sometimes it’s been difficult to figure him out.
A complex mix of emotions, energy, and angst wrapped around a big heart, Ron appeared to be this large, tough guy who wore Queensbridge on his sleeve and people conveniently overlooked his softer side. People talked about his rage while looking past his empathy. They thought his scowl on the basketball court defined him, but it was his sympathy and loyalty for others that made him who he was and still is to this day. Like I said, he’s complicated.
A year or so after I left Riverside and started playing for the Panthers, we competed in the vaunted Wheelchair Classic at Riverbank State Park on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. After the tournament, as we were leaving, Ron rolled up on me with twenty dudes from Queensbridge. I was excited to see him because we hadn’t spoken in a couple months. Then he got closer. His teeth were clenched, and his brow was furrowed. He walked toward me aggressively, like he was about to start some serious shit.
“You think you better than me?” he shouted, as his nostrils flared. “What’s up? You think you better, nigga?”
“Man, what the fuck you talkin’ about?” I responded, confused as all hell. I was caught completely off guard by his aggressiveness. I thought we were friends. I mean, we had just played together the previous summer. We had gone 59–1 with Riverside and bonded almost every day.
Ron didn’t back down and I was ready for it to go down.
“I’m the best player in this city,” Artest exclaimed. “Don’t forget that shit.”
Then . . . he simply walked away with his crew in tow. I was looking around, trying to figure out what just happened. I knew competition for the title of best player in the city was fierce. I knew the status it brought. It came with girls, money, fame, and scholarship offers. But mostly it came with respect. You couldn’t put a price on that, and it had to be earned. And Ron was damn willing to earn it. For a lot of these guys, it was all they had. Only one player a year gets the title of best player in New York City, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to give it to Ron. No matter how many dudes he had with him. I left the park confused about my encounter, thinking about what it might be like the next time I saw him.
Several weeks later, I was at another AAU tournament with the Panthers in New Jersey. It was one of the last events of the summer, so all the big names were there. If you’ve ever been to an AAU tournament or summer camp you know that when you walk into the gym, it’s wall-to-wall basketball. There can be as many as six games going on side by side with college coaches and scouts moving from court to court.
We were on court four, and my old Riverside teammate Ron Artest was all the way over on court one. I hadn’t seen him since our encounter at Riverbank, so I knew to stay on my guard.
Our game was getting increasingly physical with every possession. We were way more talented than our opponent, but they tried to make up for it with their aggression. I was matched up with one of the best prospects in the city, a moody six-foot-ten banger named James Felton who had already committed to Florida State. I was getting the best of him and let him know it with a few choice words.
Early in the game, I grabbed a hard-fought rebound and tossed an outlet pass forty feet downcourt. Everyone raced the other way except for me and Felton.
After I threw the outlet, he reared around and dropped a devastating elbow to my face. I fell to the ground. Since the action had moved downcourt, no one noticed me writhing on the floor. Well, almost no one.
Three courts away, Ron Artest, who was just at my throat a few weeks before, saw what had happened and was not pleased. He dropped everything—despite the fact that his game was in progress—and sprinted toward me across two courts, both with games going on.
I was on the ground, bleeding profusely from my nose. He rushed the court with both of his fists balled up and raised high. He was foaming at the mouth and ready for war. “Who the fuck hit Lamar?” he demanded.
He was there to knock someone the fuck out. I was in a daze from the elbow, the blood spilling, and Ron’s cocked fists. It took me a moment or two to figure out what was happening.
That’s when everyone else stopped in the middle of the play and rushed back down the court. We were on the brink of a melee. Coaches, referees, and tournament officials scrambled to restore order.
When everything settled down, by some miracle, no one was ejected, but I was out with a broken nose. “No one fucks with Lamar,” shouted Artest. “You hear me? No one fucks with my man!”
I told you Ron was a complicated guy, but if nothing else, he’s one of the most loyal people I’ve ever met.
Ron coming to my rescue made me aware for the first time how closely tied together we all were as we tried to navigate the world of high school basketball. We all played a role in each other’s story. Even James Felton, the guy who elbowed me in the face. Back in the middle of the summer of 1996, before my senior year, when we were all at ABCD camp at Fairleigh Dickinson, something happened that would change the course of Felton’s life. Looking back, this episode kind of explains why he reacted so aggressively to my trash talk.
While the unknown Tracy McGrady was in the middle of his meteoric rise that summer, his team faced off against Felton’s in the Outstanding Seniors Game, which closes out the week at ABCD. The court was cluttered with future pros such as Quentin Richardson, Al Harrington, and me. None of us had ever heard of McGrady or his hometown of Auburndale, Florida, before that week. Sonny Vaccaro had done a favor for a coach who was a longtime friend to get Tracy into the camp.
Felton, on the other hand, was a top-twenty-five prospect from nearby Jersey City who was fielding offers from St. John’s and Syracuse and who most had pegged as a future pro. With the tiny gym packed to the gills, in a flash, McGrady scooped up a loose ball in the open court and raced for what looked to be an uncontested dunk. But Felton gave chase and jumped with Tracy, who had a forty-two-inch vertical. That was the wrong thing to do.
BOOM!
Tracy thundered down a nasty windmill dunk that ignited the small gym with a raucous celebration, sending spectators pouring out onto the floor and halting the game for five minutes. It was the cherry on top of T-Mac’s blistering summer. For Felton, it was one of the most embarrassing moments of his life. From that point, Tracy would go on to win every accolade a high school player could win, declare for the draft, and sign with Adidas.
Meanwhile, Felton fell down a rabbit hole of self-loathing and shame. He started drinking and his behavior became more and more erratic. Eventually, he accepted a scholarship to St. John’s, where he, ironically, became close with fellow freshman Ron Artest. After bouncing around professional basketball’s minor leagues, he became disillusioned with the sport, took a job as a security guard in Jersey City, and focused on raising his three children.
Felton’s health was failing as his years of drinking had damaged his liver, and he developed diabetic neuropathy, which affected the nerves in his size-sixteen feet. One morning, his wife found him dead in bed at the age of twenty-seven.
Sometimes I think about the moment at that tournament in New Jersey and how all of our paths crossed and recrossed time after time. James, Ron, and Lamar. The three biggest high school basketball standouts in the city and what we all had in common, which time will likely forget. People looked at us as basketball stars. Colleges saw us as tickets to the Final Four. Sneaker companies saw us as future pitchmen.
But in truth, all three of us were kids from the New York area who suffered from one form or other of mental illness or substance abuse, or both. But those things were either buried deep beneath the surface or dismissed altogether. I didn’t know it yet, but you can’t run from the pain forever. Sooner or later it catches you. For Felton, it happened sooner. Too soon.
We were damaged and undiagnosed. To the machinery of basketball, each of us was nothing more than a temporary commodity.
They sold us a dream and we bought it.