Ron Artest, Taking Your Phone Calls

This whole new media thing is pretty interesting, especially in terms of seeing how professional athletes keep finding creative ways to reach out to their fans. While some NBA stars like Shaquille O'Neal and Dwight Howard seem to have it figured out, others like Stephon Marbury are, well ... struggling to use the technology correctly.

Taking a page from Marbury's playbook, Ron Artest went ahead and gave his phone number out to his over 29,000 followers on Twitter. And just to make sure you knew he was really answering those calls himself, Artest made a little video clip of the stunt, which of course we have for you below. It's so serious.



It seemed that most people on the line were simply calling to see if it was truly Artest who would answer; they were either too nervous or too speechless to attempt to have any sort of meaningful conversation. And honestly, this is pretty much how you'd expect this kind of experiment to go down, isn't it?

Most fans don't have anything interesting to say to a favorite player, so while Ron-Ron is sure to get his share of calls, the dialogue is probably going to continue to be pretty one-sided -- which is probably just fine with him.

As long as Artest has enough time to drop the name of the artist he's been promoting on his recent trip to China, I'm sure he won't mind the astronomical bill that's on the way for the thousands of calls blowing up his cell phone while he's on one of those infamous international roaming plans.