Metta World Peace only has one regret from his iconic NBA career.
More than anything, he wanted a real chance to play for his hometown team.
“If you really wanna play with time, imagine if we could move that prime Metta to the Knicks,” World Peace said on a recent episode of “The Hoop Chat with Emily Austin” when asked if he would change anything about his career. “I wish I could reverse time, I would put myself in a Knicks jersey.”
A Queens native, World Peace grew up a Knicks fan and played locally at St. John’s before his 19-year NBA career, which he spent with the Bulls, Pacers, Kings, Rockets, Lakers and Knicks.
But World Peace, now 43, spent less than a season with the Knicks and only played 29 games with the team.
He was well past his prime at that point in 2013-14, averaging just 4.8 points with the Knicks.
World Peace was with the Pacers when he was notoriously part of “The Malice in the Palace,” the most infamous brawl between players and fans in sports history.
After serving an 86-game suspension, World Peace the following season became the first player in NBA history to be fined for publicly requesting a trade.
Now many years retired, World Peace has reflected on that period of his life and believes he was playing a character.
“That trade request, it was just more compound frustration,” World Peace said. “It had nothing to do with the team. At that time, just so much pressure for me, not for other people. But for me, it was a ton of pressure. The brawl just happened. I missed out on an All-Star Game, missed out on my second Defensive Player of the Year that probably would have been mine again. I missed out on another All-NBA team. I couldn’t get over that. I was super unbalanced. And then I’m still so competitive. I come back to practice like I never left. And I wasn’t really apologetic at that time, at that age.
“Inside I was apologetic, but I didn’t want to portray that I was apologetic. Not having empathy, that made it worse on me because since I was faking not having empathy, it made it feel like I didn’t have empathy. When you don’t have empathy, it’s not a good spot to be in. That’s why later in my career I became way more vulnerable. I played the tough guy role, I said ‘now it’s time to just play a normal guy role.’”
