Veteran Metta World Peace Says NBA has turned “soft” but Julius Randle is ‘a man’

Los Angeles Lakers veteran Metta World Peace shared his harsh opinions about ho the NBA has changed over the years.

The 35-year-old player sat down with Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times and talked about the differences between the leagues when he first started playing and now. World Peace stated that parents have made the NBA "soft."

"I remember I came into the NBA in 1999, the game was a little bit more rough," World Peace said. "The game now is more for kids. It's not really a man's game anymore."

He added, "The parents are really protective of their children. They cry to their AAU coaches. They cry to the refs, 'That's a foul. That's a foul.' Sometimes I wish those parents would just stay home, don't come to the game...So now we have a problem. You've got a bunch of babies professionally around the world. It's no longer a man's game. It's a baby's game. There's softies everywhere. Everybody's soft. Nobody's hard no more. So, you just deal with it, you adjust and that's it."

Despite World Peace's harsh assessment of the league and its new players, he had high praise for second-year forward, Julius Randle. World Peace has been working with Randle throughout the offseason. Randle has been recovering from a broken leg that he sustained in his first every NBA game last season. Many people speculated that the Lakers signed World Peace to an unguaranteed one-year contract so that he could continue mentoring Randle.

"He's a man," World Peace said. "He's Julius Randle.... His ceiling is as high as destiny. We don't know because he's only 19. I don't want to predict the future because so many great things are going to happen from now until he's like 30."

World Peace, who signed a nonguaranteed $1.5 million contract, has yet to make it on the Lakers' 15-man roster. The preseason team currently has 19 players. In order to secure a spot by opening day, head coach Byron Scott stated that World Peace would have to prove that he is still the same player.

"I think he just needs to show us that he's still Metta, that he can defend at a very high level at multiple positions, that he can still get up and down the floor and that he can play within the offense," Scott said. "I think we already know he can be a great teammate. He's been great at training camp with our young guys. We want to know if he can still play at a high level. That's the biggest thing."

World Peace played in China and Italy from last year before making his return to the NBA.