{"id":7951,"date":"2011-06-27T15:38:25","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T19:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=7951"},"modified":"2011-06-27T15:19:46","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T19:19:46","slug":"ron-artest-call-me-metta-world-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=7951","title":{"rendered":"Ron Artest: Call Me Metta World Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LOS ANGELES &#8212; Los Angeles Lakers forward <strong>Ron Artest<\/strong> wants to change his name to <strong>Metta World Peace<\/strong>.<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Artest&#8217;s<\/strong> attorney filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday seeking the change. The 31-year-old NBA star was born <strong>Ronald William Artest Jr<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In the court documents, <strong>Artest<\/strong> cites personal reasons for wanting to make the change.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Artest&#8217;s<\/strong> career has been filled with ups and downs. He helped the Lakers win the NBA championship a year ago and in April he received an award for outstanding service and dedication to the community. He has testified before Congress to support mental health legislation.<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Artest <\/strong>wouldn&#8217;t be the first NBA player to make a change to an unusual name.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lloyd Bernard Free<\/strong>, who played in the league from 1975 to 1988, had his first name legally changed to<strong> World<\/strong> in 1981. A friend had given him the nickname because of his 44-inch vertical leaps and 360-degree dunks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LOS ANGELES &#8212; Los Angeles Lakers forward Ron Artest wants to change his name to Metta World Peace. Artest&#8217;s attorney filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday seeking the change. The 31-year-old NBA star was born Ronald William Artest Jr. In the court documents, Artest cites personal reasons for wanting to make [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}