Florida Sentinel Bulletin

EL SEGUNDO, CA – The Los Angeles Lakers Metta World Peace (Ron Artest) deprived his team of his services as their starting small forward and defensive stopper for at least six playoff games while he serves his 10th suspension in the past decade.

The NBA suspended World Peace for seven games on Tuesday for the inexplicable blow that gave James Harden a concussion, keeping the former Ron Artest sidelined for most of the first postseason round.

ORLANDO, FL  — Tiger Woods’ swing coach says criticism of his client is getting out of hand.

“I know everyone has a job to do, and I get it,” Sean Foley said this week on “Fairways of Life,” a radio show hosted by Matt Adams on XM Sirius. “But if it is about the game of golf, Tiger Woods is an extremely important part of the game, and I think everyone understands that. It has just gotten to the point where the tearing down of Tiger as a person and a golfer has become just too much. I think it is just out of hand.”

PROSPER, TEXAS —Police said late Tuesday that Deion Sanders, the former Dallas Cowboys star was cited for misdemeanor simple assault in the wake of an altercation with his estranged wife, Pilar, that got her arrested Monday at their mansion in the Dallas suburb of Prosper.

ALLEN PARK, Mich. –  Calvin Johnson has joined his Detroit Lions teammates for voluntary, care-free workouts this week.

Johnson had one season left on the contract he got as the No. 2 pick in the 2007 NFL draft when he signed an eight-year deal worth up to $132 million last month.

RIVERVIEW —Just as they did at the county championships, the Plant High girls and boys track squads dominated the distance races and scored plenty of points elsewhere to sweep the team titles in Wednesday’s Class 4A-District 6 meet at Leto.

Pictured: Tampa Bay Tech’s Deonte Williams (left) edges Plant’s Antonio Crawford to win the 100-meter dash at the 4A-District 6 meet Wednesday.

S Ron Girault and RB Robert Hughes have been signed to the Tampa Bay Buccaners.

Girault, who played for coach Greg Schiano at Rutgers, entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent with Kansas City in 2008.

Most recently he played for the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League.

Hughes entered the league as an undrafted free agent with Chicago in 2011 and spent the final two weeks of the season on the Bears practice squad.

One of the first players to sue the NFL over concussions and head injuries has committed suicide.

Ray Easterling, a defensive back for the Atlanta Falcons in the 1970’s, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Richmond, Va., on Thursday. He was 62.

Easterling was a top performer in the secondary for the Falcons when they set a team record with 26 interceptions in 1977, a year in which the defense allowed a league-low 129 points.

Easterling sued the NFL in August and according to his attorney Larry Coben wrote the NFL “continuously and vehemently denied that it knew, should have known or believed that there is any relationship between NFL players suffering concussions while playing . . . and long-term problems such as headaches, dizziness, dementia and/or Alzheimer’s disease that many retired players have experienced.”

Easterling had suffered for the past 20 years, according to his wife, battling depression, insomnia, memory loss and more. He was diagnosed with dementia in March 2011.

During Sunday afternoon’s Lakers home game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, we saw a side of Metta World Peace (a.k.a., Ron Artest) that we haven’t encountered in quite some time.

World Peace elbowed James Harden hard in the side of the head. Harden went to the ground immediately, and Metta was immediately and rightfully ejected from the game.

The entire incident happened very quickly, so much so that it’s hard to know exactly what World Peace intended to do. What’s apparent is that he felt Harden and responded by swinging an elbow. However, MWP also didn’t look over his shoulder to see who it was and seemed to throw his elbow as an impulse rather than with the intention to hit a player in the head.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Veteran safety Brian Dawkins is retiring from the NFL after 16 seasons.

Dawkins posted the news on his Twitter account Monday, thanking the teams he played for, his coaches and teammates and fans.

Dawkins spent his first 13 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles and his last three with the Denver Broncos.

He suffered a serious neck injury in December that sidelined him for the stretch run and the Broncos’ two playoff games.

“I would like to thank the Eagles & the Broncos 4 believing in me,” he tweeted. “I would like 2 thank all my teammates & coaches that I have been blessed 2 go to battle with. Along with u, the fans 4 helping make my career 1 that I have enjoyed tremendously. In other words. I am announcing my retirement from the NFL.”