There are few more violent fouls in the history of the NBA than that of Metta World Peace's infamous elbow on the side of James Harden's head during the 2012 NBA Playoffs. Then with the Los Angeles Lakers, MWP (now known as Metta Sandiford-Artest) delivered one of the most brutal elbows you'll ever see on a hapless James Harden. According to Metta, however, it was not intentional.
Before anything else, let's have a look at that elbow again just so we are able to set the premise here:
Pretty vicious, right? Well, in his mind, the former Lakers forward claims that he didn't mean to hurt Harden on this particular play (h/t Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson):
“It wasn’t meant for James,” Metta said. “I didn’t even know who was behind me. I just felt someone push me; I didn’t know who it was.
“It was very unfortunate.”
To be fair, based on his statement above, MWP did say that the elbow was not meant for Harden specifically. He did not say that the elbow itself was unintentional, because clearly, it definitely was. I guess the ex-Lakers veteran is saying that it could have been for anybody else on the Oklahoma City Thunder squad? I honestly don't know if this makes it better or worse.
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