Ron Artest turned out okay.

I was a huge fan of the Indiana Pacers when I was younger. I wasn't as big of a fan as my brother, but I still shared in the obsession, wearing a Reggie Miller jersey a lot and calling into the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library to get the latest Pacer phone biography. (My brother and I would put that on speakerphone and listen to that over a lunch of baloney and cheese. Yes, we were that cool.) When the Pacers beat the Chicago Bulls in Michael Jordan's first return, I celebrated; when they made the NBA Finals in 2000, I bought a "mistake" shirt that claimed they won the Finals; and when Reggie retired, I cried. (And I still get a little teary every time I watch that video. I do the same at the end of Apollo 13.)

Then came The Brawl. The Malice at the Palace of Auburn Hills, coupled with Reggie's retirement at the end of the offending season, is firmly marked in my mind as the turning point in my Pacers fandom. After years of following the team's every move (I still recall the random statistic and keep a framed Reggie card), I simply stopped watching. I didn't want to follow a team that, to me, was going downhill. Besides, in my 16-year-old mind, I had more important and less morally ambiguous things to do, like watch the Indianapolis Colts.

And although Stephen Jackson played a large role in the brawl as well, I reserved my highest disdain for its second protagonist, Ron Artest. As he moved from the Pacers to the Sacramento Kings, Houston Rockets, and Los Angeles Lakers, I blamed him for ruining my fandom. Combined with his constant self-promotion, I wrote him off as someone unforgivable.

Artest drifted out of my consciousness for a while, until he won an NBA championship with the Lakers. His post-game interview, where he thanked his psychiatrist among others, brought him back into my good graces. He was frank about himself, he didn't gloat (like he had been known to do), and he seemed like a better person than he did in 2004. I'm not immaturely mad at him anymore.

This whole process had nothing to do with race. I'm not gonna make the Stephen Colbert claim that I'm completely color-blind, and subconscious judging may have pushed me toward blanket condemnation of Artest, but I never saw race as a compelling variable as this happened. I like to think that I would have thought the same thing if, say, Rik Smits had punched a fan. (And look at my adulation of Reggie.)

I guess that's the point I'm trying to make here. Artest may have influenced the black stereotype in the NBA for a lot of people, but not for me.