News; His home court has changed, but enigmatic Artest has not

So here's Ron Artest, sitting at his locker stall, smiling up into the TV cameras and microphones, insisting that his first game back in Houston had no added significance.

"I was only here one year," he said. "It wasn't like I was Hakeem Olajuwon. I didn't do s--- here."

And there's Ron Artest, out on the Toyota Center floor, talking enough smack and engaging in enough rough stuff with Trevor Ariza to have earned them offsetting technical fouls less than three minutes into the game.

"I got hit with about three elbows," he said. "If you throw an elbow into Ron Artest's chest, do you know who you're hitting?"

More than a rhetorical question, it is one the Lakers will be trying to answer all season long, just like the Rockets, Kings, Pacers and Bulls before them.

Who is Ron Artest? The tough, hard-nosed enforcer who solidifies the L.A. lineup to lock up back-to-back titles? Or the unreliable crack in the foundation that will ultimately bring the house down?

"He's different," said teammate Kobe Bryant.

"Ron hasn't been outspoken at all," said coach Phil Jackson.

Indeed, the most flamboyant touches that Artest has brought to the Lakers' locker room so far are the Chinese characters he's had carved into his hair. For the season opener, the tonsorial message was: Champions. In Houston, he had changed to a combination of Korean characters that spelled out: Lakers. Perhaps that was just in case anyone had forgotten that Artest and Ariza had essentially swapped themselves as free agents over the summer.

A handful of games into his 12th NBA season, Artest remains the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Or he's the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. He can be charming, disarming or just plain goofy. And those can be different descriptions of his game at different times.

At 6-foot-7, 260 pounds, he's a strong, strapping bull that could treat the lane like the streets of Pamplona to get to the basket, but spends more of his time these days shooting 3-pointers. At 29, he is no longer the quick, lockdown defender who was named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year in 2004.

But in the ensuing years it's become clear that neither is Artest the reckless, thoughtless thug as he was portrayed for going into the stands to fight fans at The Palace of Auburn Hills on Nov. 19, 2004, the night that will live in NBA infamy.

Depending on what time of the day you catch him, Artest is either wearing a hard, protective turtle's shell that allows all criticism to bounce harmlessly off, or he's as soft and vulnerable as a kitten.

When Artest was first traded to the Rockets in the summer of 2008, Yao Ming joked that he hoped his new teammate was "no longer going into the stands." Artest promptly went into a snit and threatened to undo the deal if he wasn't loved and wanted and the incident at The Palace put in the past. When he charged eight rows deep into the fans chasing a loose ball during a playoff game last spring, Artest came to the interview room wearing a grin and said, "You know, it's not the first time I've been in the stands."

Artest physically battled with and hissed at Bryant during the playoff series between the Rockets and Lakers last spring and now does everything but rehearse Kobe's induction speech for the Hall of Fame.

When asked if he regretted spending last season in Houston, Artest replied, "Yeah, I do. I've been blessed to get to play basketball. But one percent tells me I wish I could have gone somewhere else so I could have exercised my Bird rights. That hurt me a lot. But I still managed to get a good contract -- maybe $20 million off --- but God is still good, he's still taking care of my family. So everything is OK."

What Artest failed to mention is that any other team he might have been traded to in 2008 --- or if he had stayed in Sacramento --- would have had the same option as the Rockets with his Bird rights and this past summer, when he became a free agent, no team offered more than the Lakers' $33 million mid-level exception. So the protestations around missing out on an additional $20 million are more than a bit disingenuous.

Artest wears No. 37 on his jersey now, in honor of Michael Jackson, fitting because Artest has moonwalked on a few other points about his career. He said again that he would have been happy to come off the bench for the Rockets all of last season and was only forced into the starting lineup due to Tracy McGrady's knee injury. But the truth is that just two weeks into the season, Artest was chafing at his reserve role.

A year ago, when McGrady began making last-minute decisions as to whether he would play on a given night, Artest began to play the same game. There were times when his Rockets teammates were getting ready to go out onto the floor and he was still sitting at his locker, not in uniform.

He habitually broke offensive sets, over-dribbled and put up a barrage of 3-pointers. He was missing for much of the Rockets' first round playoff series against Portland, but exploded for a 27-point tour de force in the Game 6 clincher.

Then after losing to L.A. in the second round, Artest bolted to join the Lakers and became their enigma.

"(Houston) was the first option," he said. "But once my agent told me they didn't want me, I said let's go to L.A., Hollywood."

It's a place where the actor's roles can change as often as the messages carved into Artest's hair. Sometimes, the best approach is to just wait for it to grow out and change.

"You know, I didn't read the first one," Jackson said of Artest's hairdos. "I couldn't read it. It was beyond my interpretation. I'm not willing to go that far anyway to try to figure it out."