Laker Nation

This is good news to hear from Phil. Recently, he spoke on Ron Artest and how he planned to utilize him in his system:

Sports Radio Interviews: On whether he knows how he’s going to use Ron Artest: “Yes I do. I’ve spent some time thinking about it. Ron has a real knack of being a top defender and an aggressive player on the defensive end of the court. I felt a couple of years ago when we were looking for some people that could help this team move up in the rankings from where we were, we entertained the idea of trying to get Ron on the team to bring that toughness and defensive mentality to our team. This is really an addition to our game that we think is important. Not to say that we’re not going to miss (Trevor) Ariza. We’re definitely going to miss Trevor in our game. There’s a certain sense of how he plays. He didn’t need a lot of shots, he didn’t need a lot of things run for him as a player to be happy and to contribute. His defensive capabilities and steals to get through picks and get back to his man were invaluable to us last year in the playoffs. But we think overall that we probably have a more balanced and difficult team to defend and to score against on this team. I think Ron’s going to be a really big addition to this team. Not only defensively, but he can do some things offensively that’ll be able to help our team and people will be surprised.”