As Articulate As They Wanna Be

Later in the day I usually turn on ESPN and have it on in the background while I'm working. Yesterday's Jim Rome take involved Los Angeles Laker Ron Artest's comments on Los Angeles Clippers rookie forward Blake Griffin's rapidly expanding highlight reel, which is about all you'll be able to catch of Griffin, since the Clippers have been horrible for years and are never shown on national television.

Griffin looks awesome, at least in the highlights they show on ESPN, and Artest was asked about it:

I hope he dunks on me. His highlights is stupid.

That's "stupid" as in Black Eyed Peas' definition of "stupid". It's a hilarious quote. You can watch him saying "His highlights is stupid" here at 9:35 (start at 9:08 to get the full gist):

Artest goes on to say that if Griffin dunked on him he would buy that poster and ask the rookie to sign it. Like I said, hilarious — and when you watch the full interview you see how Artest is holding court for the sports writers and they're all laughing along with him.

I was telling Jen about the "highlights is stupid" quote and I noticed an above-the-fold story about Griffin on the front page of The New York Times sports section. Sure enough, they brought up the Artest quote in the fourth paragraph, but look at how lamely they cleaned it up:

"His highlights are sick," said Lakers forward Ron Artest, repeating the declaration as if speaking in capital letters. "I wish he dunks on me. I'm not going to lie. I hope he dunks on me, puts his shoulders on my face and like, 'Aaaaah!' Just crazy. Lights it up. His highlights are stupid."

I suppose it's OK to clean up Artest's vernacular but why? It's such an awesome quote — sort of like "Why Can't Us?" or "The Bears are who we thought they were!"

If you watch the full interview it's clear that Artest is being purposely folksy. Maybe an overeager copy editor even changed the quote. A friend once told me that an overeager copy editor changed his "through a glass darkly" to "darkly through a glass." He was pissed. Regardless, the Times should give Artest his quote back.

At the same time, maybe Jim Rome could have contextualized Artest's comments a little more — maybe by showing the Los Angeles Times' YouTube of the interview (incidentally, how cool is that that they put up all eleven-plus minutes of it online?). Rome's staff is having some fun with Artest's vernacular at Artest's expense — fair enough but a tiny bit cheap if you listen to the whole clip on the YouTube. And if you watch the full video you can hear more about his charity championship ring raffle to raise money for mental health issues, which seems extra cool on the part of Artest.