Intro:

Former NBA star Metta World Peace held a press conference in Italy on Thursday following his move to Pallacanestro Cantu.

Script:

SOUNDBITE: (English) Metta World Peace, Cantu player:

Q. How do you prefer to be referred to?

"Some people call me Ron Artest, the people that saw my career, so they still call me Ron, I think Daniele (della Fiori) still calls me Ron, so that's fine. Most of the younger players, the young kids, they call me Metta, and then everybody in China calls me 'panda'. So, you can pick."

SOUNDBITE: (English) Metta World Peace, Cantu player:
"You know, I've been having this kind of 'Panda' thing about me and I thought it was the perfect animal for me, because when you play basketball, or you play sports, or you're wrestling, or playing soccer, you have an animal instinct, and what type of animal is that, you know? And that's the perfect animal for me - a panda."

SOUNDBITE: (English) Metta World Peace, Cantu player:

"You know, I'm 35 years-old now, 'Malice in the Palace" I was 25, and five years before that I was 20, you know. So, mentally, I always had the 'street' mentality as a child and as you get older you become more mature."

SOUNDBITE: (English) Metta World Peace, Cantu player:

"Well, when you play angry, you can't focus. But when I played with Phil Jackson with the (LA) Lakers, he was really concentrated on Zen and being calm, playing hard, playing aggressive, but being smart and being calm. So, it took me a while to adjust to that, so in the last six years I haven't played with that much passion, because anytime I got too excited I always got in trouble. But now I kind of want to see if I can play with some more passion again. So this year, it's a good question, because I do want to bring more fire to basketball."