Metta World Peace is going to be playing basketball in China this year, and he's going to be calling himself The Friendly Panda, or something. Anyway, he's also going to be wearing the shoes you see above, because Metta World Peace does whatever he wants.

Metta World Peace may no longer be the terrifying NBA presence he once was—mostly because he's no longer in the NBA—but that doesn't mean that he's a guy you can fuck with at the Venice summer league. Two dudes found out as much while playing in a recent pick-up game with the former defensive player of the year.

What happens when Metta World Peace gets on a tour bus with a bunch of children? Hijinks obviously ensued. "At one point, a fifth grader notices a billboard for Larry Flynt's Hustler Club. It's not subtle. The boy, being around 12, tells the whole bus about it. Soon, everyone is screaming." [Time]

Key & Peele, the show that brought us the great college-football-players-with-funny-names bit, boasted NBA oddball Metta World Peace as a guest last night. MWP did a short sketch called "Metta World News," in which he plays a news anchor who shares his free-associative thoughts about dreams, eating one's own hand,…

This sucks.

Now that it looks like the cap-strapped Lakers are going to amnesty Metta World Peace sometime in the next week to save $14.8 million, Metta World Peace has reacted on Twitter in the most Metta World Peace way imaginable.

This is becoming an annual tradition: the Lakers get eliminated, and Metta World Peace does a local weather report.

From his press conference today:

We learned today that Oklahoma City's Russell Westbrook will undergo surgery for a torn lateral meniscus in his right knee. This is great news for Western Conference hopefuls and bad news for anyone who loves basketball: We still don't know how long he'll be out, and the NBA playoffs without Westbrook suiting up for…

Is it cheating to call this the strangest postgame interview Metta World Peace has ever given, when it's tied for first with every other one he's done?

Update: This—part or all of it—is some sort of PR stunt, because in in this gilded age, even the most banal things are guerrilla marketing. A Deadspin staffer got this email yesterday, excerpted in part:

Here it is, from today's Los Angeles Times:

What you see there, somewhere, is Dwight Howard's second technical foul of the day—second technical foul of the first half, even—and so, the referees had to send him packing. Their hands were tied, it's a rule. Howard appears to get tangled up with the Raptors Alan Anderson after a Metta World Peace—who hilariously…

The Lakers snapped a six-game losing streak with a 20-point win over the last-place Cavaliers, thanks in large part to the return of Dwight Howard from a shoulder injury. But the real star of the show was Metta World Peace, who, with reporters gathered around his locker after the game, launched what Mark Medina of the Daily News called…

This video comes from last night's Lakers-Rockets game, which ended as another demoralizing loss of the Lakers. That's Steve Nash wiping the sweat from his armpits with a towel, casually handing the towel to his teammate Metta World Peace, and then walking away as World Peace proceeds to bury his face in the gross,…

On Friday night, Thunder forward Serge Ibaka and Lakers forward/crazy person Metta World Peace got into a bit of a tussle. Immediately after the game, Spurs swingman Stephen Jackson sent out the following, since-deleted tweet: