Metta World Peace Moves into Movies

For some crazy reason a lot of basketball players like to think they can act. Since their names are typically pretty marketable many of them don't have trouble finding someone willing to give them a role.

Michael Jordan has done it (although I watched it more for Bugs Bunny and the gang rather than His Airness). The Big Thespian, Shaquille O'Neal, had a pair of movies (Blue Chips was alright; all he had to do was dunk a basketball. Kazaam; well, that's another story. Ray Allen represented himself well in He Got Game.

Can we forget the cinematic contributions of Dennis Rodman (Double Team; when Jean Claude VanDame realized he was no longer a big name in Hollywood. Rodman also had two other movies and a part in a TV show).

It looks like Metta World Peace will soon be joining that fraternity.

The man formerly known as Ron Artest is going to play--now don't laugh--a cop in the movie adaptation of a Nancy Grace novel, The Eleventh Victim.

MWP is not a complete novice to acting. He did have a role on the BET series Reed Between the Lines where he played a professional basketball player with anger management issues (not typecasting there).

How or why MWP got the role is not known, although he and Grace were on Dancing with the Stars together. Either way the man is losing some serious street cred with this move. If it wasn't bad enough that he was going to be a cop, he's going to be a cop in a movie broadcast on the Lifetime Channel!

Come on man!

(I couldn't find a clip of MWP from the BET show, but here is a clip from his time on Dancing with the Stars.)