It surprised a lot of basketball watchers — this one included — when Metta World Peace wound up winning the final spot on the Los Angeles Lakers’ 2016-17 roster. He’d played fewer than 1,000 total NBA minutes over the past three years, had scarcely looked like himself since undergoing meniscus surgery on his left knee in the spring of 2013, and seemed to offer little in the way of tangible benefit for a Lakers squad finally embarking on a rebuilding effort after bidding farewell to Kobe Bryant.

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As Lakers coach (and former MWP teammate) Luke Walton made clear after breaking camp, though, the 37-year-old Artist Formerly Known as Ron Artest brings other stuff to the table — experience, edge, toughness … and love. Pure, unadulterated love.

Metta reminded us all of that on Tuesday night, when the Lakers took on the his former team, the Indiana Pacers, and he was pressed into duty late in the third quarter at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Pacers big man Lavoy Allen fouled Lakers center Timofey Mozgov on a cut to the basket with 2:36 remaining in the frame, and the Russian big man had to be removed from the game after taking a shot to the face that left him unable to see out of his left eye. With the fouled player unable to take his free throws, Pacers coach Nate McMillan got to take his pick of free-throw shooters on the Lakers’ active roster … and he tapped World Peace who had played just six minutes through L.A.’s first three games, and had yet to register a point in his 17th NBA season.

So, naturally, World Peace calmly strode to the line and knocked down his freebies, but not before making sure the world knew just how much he cares about this game.

“I LOVE BASKETBALL,” bellowed the man who once changed his name from Metta World Peace to The Panda’s Friend, just because. As if we were unaware. Just to make sure we all knew.

Those two free throws were the extent of World Peace’s contributions on Tuesday, as he finished with two points in 2 1/2 minutes of playing time in the Lakers’ 115-108 road loss to the Pacers. And yet, taken in tandem with the apropos-of-nothing vocalization of his passion, that was enough.

“The clock keeps ticking. You can’t let moments shape you. You shape the moment,” World Peace said, according to Mark Medina of the Orange County Register. “Time doesn’t stop. It doesn’t wait or think. So you just move on.”

And keep on loving, of course.

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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