Ron Artest Is a Higher Quality Cheese

Ron Artest is about as quotable as they come, but he'd been relatively quiet over the past few days following his agent's announcement that he would likely not opt out of his contract this summer. (For the record, I'm saying "Yeah, right" to that, but then again, what do I know?) But more importantly, for us non-Sactown fans, is Ron's ability to express himself publicly not being restricted by unknown forces. The good news? He's talking again.

'The (Kings) team likes me; the players like me; the franchise likes playing me,' Artest said. 'There are a lot of good reasons to be in Sacramento still.'

Yet as Artest knows, he might have been dealt if the Kings had received offers they deemed fair value. As it was, the most notable situation, with Denver, was hung up because of a player who isn't even a starter (Nuggets small forward Linas Kleiza).

'They were trying to bargain shop,' Artest said. 'They were trying to get government cheese, and I'm Kraft.'

Yesssssss. With all due respect to "Crazy Pills", I'm going to go ahead and say that we need to start referring to Artest as either "Kraft" or "Cheda". Can you imagine how many times this government-cheese-analogy is going to get thrown around when Artest starts looking for an extension next year? If he doesn't use the phrase "heavy-cheda" at some point, I'll be sorely disappointed. It will also be interesting to see how the Kings, currently in 11th place in the Western Conference, and a large seven games out of the playoff race, will give run to their younger guys during the stretch run, which would mean mildly reduced minutes for Artest (looking at you Francisco Garcia!). Not saying it will happen, but we'll find out a lot re: how serious ownership is at retaining Cheda's services by how the remainder of this season shapes up.