Video of Ron Artest Calling out Chris Webber and Charles Barkley

Video: Ron Artest Calls out Chris Webber and Charles Barkley

Posted on 28 May 2009 by HG

A few weeks back, when the Houston Rockets were playing the Portland Trailblazers in the first round of the NBA Playoffs, Ron Artest said Brandon Roy is the best player he’s ever faced, and went on a captivating storytelling journey about seeing a friend murdered with a table leg.

Chris Webber and Charles Barkley had a few laughs at Ron’s expense on TNT’s NBA postgame show. Artest got on his MacBook and fired back.

I gotta side with Artest on this one. If a couple of white guys were on TV doing the “Hood” voice and clowning Ron it would be called stupid and probably racist. And like he said, he wasn’t talking like that.

Inner-city dreams of escaping the block are often shattered by unfortunate conditions and bad decisions. These situations aren’t a laughing matter and C-Webb and Chuck should know better.

I covered the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers for a sports radio station here in LA from 1998 to 2001… Meaning, I went in the locker rooms after the game, recorded some comments, and took them back to the studio. I learned early on that the black reporter and the black athlete have a unique relationship (One that Kobe Bryant didn’t honor at the time). The athletes would give me a little better answers, a little more time, and in return I didn’t make them sound like jackasses. This doesn’t mean I covered them with kid-gloves -I was still a reporter and had a job to do- but if a guy misspoke or made a grammatical error it probably didn’t find its way onto the station’s air. There were times when guys were tired or had a bad game and they didn’t want to talk, but they would say “I’ll do it for you”, in a tone that meant “I’ll do it for US.” Funny how Chris and Charles have forgotten those days.

So under the code I would never make fun of how Ron Artest or anybody from the hood talks. These same rules do not apply to Shaun King when he attempts to speak Spanish.