NBA All-Star Metta Sandiford-Artest

Episode notes

(Photo: Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

Hoops week continues on Bullseye!

We’re revisiting our conversation with NBA All-Star Metta Sandiford Artest. His larger than life personality often precedes him and has made him one of the most polarizing players in the history of the game.

In 2018, when we talked with him, he went by the name Metta World Peace. He changed it to Metta Sandiford-Artest in 2020 – just after he married to his second wife, Maya Sandiford. At the time he’d just written a memoir about his life. “No Malice: My Life in Basketball.”

The Queensbridge, New York native talked to Jesse about how his upbringing shaped him as a person and how it impacted the way he raises his own children, what he regrets from his stint playing with the Indiana Pacers and how downsizing his world rescued him. Plus, he got into the infamous NBA brawl dubbed the “Malice at the Palace.”

A version of this interview originally aired in June of 2018.

In this episode...

Jesse Thorn

Host

Kevin Ferguson

Senior Producer

Jesus Ambrosio

Producer

Richard Robey

Producer

Daniel Arón Speer

Video Editor

Guests

Metta Sandiford-Artest

About the show

Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.

Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.

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