Introducing Metta World Peace, or, the artist formerly known as Ron Artest. The story of Ron Artest is a long and winding one. A quick glance at a simple “Ron Artest” Google image search reveals as much. Some highlights include cracking the ribs of a certain basketball player during a recreational game. The player in question was a guy named Michael Jordan. You may have heard of him.

More famously, there’s the “Malice in the Palace” incident against the Detroit Pistons, which, among many other residual effects, may have derailed a championship-caliber basketball team. Then there’s the “retirement to produce records, er, about that” stuff. In fact, in order to properly document the travels of Ron, this particular article would be longer than a Bill Simmons retro diary.

Artest, to his credit, has repaired his image around following the Detroit incident, even befriending the fan who threw the cup that started the riot.

In fact, his turn around has been so complete, Artest was recently awarded the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award from the NBA for his work with mental health awareness. Artest himself has also become a lovable character, especially for NBA fans, if, for nothing else, than his silly, yet, sometimes bizarre antics. With that in mind, perhaps the name change shouldn’t come as a surprise, but then again, the name itself — Metta World Peace — is just too good to be true.

Obviously, the Twitter crowd feels the same, seeing how’s the not one, but two Ron Artest-related trends on the Worldwide Trends list.

While there’s still some shock concerning the “is he really going to do this” angle, Artest has already filed the paperwork to bring the change about:

Artest has informed the Lakers of his plans but has not yet filed paperwork with the NBA to apply for a name change on the back of his jersey, Lakers spokesman John Black said.

“My understanding is ‘Metta’ will be his first name and ‘World Peace’ will be his last,” Black said.

Of course it will. The “metta” in “Metta World Peace” represents… well, here’s Ron to tell you all about it:

So there’s that.

As for reaction from the Lakers management concerning Artest’s name change, Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak had perhaps the best response of them all:

We’ll just ignore the fact that Artest’s “Metta World Peace” name is similar to World B. Free. As indicated, Artest, a savvy social media user himself, became the talk of Twitter. Reaction varied from “you so crazy” to “for real?” to “we’re being trolled,” all of which probably have some merit:

The “Ron Artest” trend had some gems as well:

I vote for that.

It’s probably best that way, Bonnie. Now, the last word on the matter:

As for Artest, er, World Peace, he’s taking all the comments in stride. Having a peaceful outlook helps deal with Internet trolls, apparently:

I’ll say this for the name change, which some feel is an attention-whore move: At least his new name doesn’t stand for his jersey number, right Chad Johnson? Is Artest/World Peace having a good time with the attention the announcement caused? Answering a question with a question perhaps, but, wouldn’t you?