“I’m his agent and nothing has come across my desk,” said Bauman. “Although Ron has asked me to explore all options over in Europe in the event of a prolonged lockout, there are several legal and business considerations that have to be addressed. The biggest one involves insurance. None of those have been addressed and I don’t even know who this guy claiming to have an agreement is. Final thing is what if the league has a lockout for say two weeks and then end up getting a deal. It becomes a moot point.
However untrue the reports of Artest heading to Finland may be, they come as no surprise for the enigmatic 31-year old small forward, who recently made tabloid headlines when it became public that Artest had filed papers to legally change his name to “Metta World Peace.”