Ron Artest Net Worth, Age & Career in 2026

Ron Artest’s net worth sits at an estimated $30 million as of 2026. That figure comes mostly from a 17-season NBA career, with additional income from endorsements, music, television, and a handful of business ventures he built after retiring. Born November 13, 1979, Artest is 46 years old and listed at 6 feet 7 inches, though he has said in interviews that his real height is closer to 6 foot 5. Now legally known as Metta Sandiford-Artest, he spent nearly two decades in the league as a small forward, most famously helping the Los Angeles Lakers win the 2010 NBA championship.

Quick Facts

Early Life And Biography

Ronald William Artest Jr. was born on November 13, 1979, and raised in the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, Queens. His mother, Sarah Artest, worked as a bank teller, and he grew up with two younger brothers, Isaiah and Daniel.

Artest played high school basketball at La Salle Academy in Manhattan before enrolling at St. John’s University in 1997. He helped the Red Storm reach the Elite Eight of the 1999 NCAA Tournament, a run that put him on NBA scouts’ radar heading into that year’s draft.

Away from organized ball, Artest also spent time on the courts at Rucker Park in Harlem, where he built a friendship with streetball regular Jermaine Turner. He has said he took an interest in mathematics as a teenager, a subject he returned to decades later when he started auditing analytics classes at UCLA during his final playing years.

Career Timeline

The Chicago Bulls picked Artest 16th overall in the 1999 NBA Draft. He spent three seasons in Chicago before a 2002 trade sent him to the Indiana Pacers, where his defense turned him into an All-Star and eventual Defensive Player of the Year in 2004.

That same November, Artest was at the center of the Pacers-Pistons brawl, an on-court and in-stands fight that led to an 86-game suspension, the longest in NBA history for an on-court incident. Trades to the Sacramento Kings in 2006 and the Houston Rockets in 2008 followed before he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2009.

Artest hit a title-clinching three-pointer in Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals, sealing a championship alongside Kobe Bryant. He later auctioned off that championship ring in a charity raffle, raising more than $650,000 for mental health programs, including a $50,000 gift to Pacific Clinics that the Kresge Foundation matched threefold. The gesture, along with his openness about his own therapy, later earned him the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award.

Artest legally changed his name to Metta World Peace in September 2011, briefly used “The Panda’s Friend” around 2014, and settled on Metta Sandiford-Artest in 2020. In between, he signed a one-year, $1.4 million deal with the Sichuan Blue Whales in China for the 2014 to 2015 season, then joined Pallacanestro Cantù in Italy in early 2015 before finishing his career back with the Lakers. Across 17 NBA seasons he scored 13,058 points, grabbed 4,448 rebounds, and handed out 2,631 assists, numbers that back up his reputation as a two-way small forward rather than a pure scorer. He retired in 2017 and spent one season as a player development coach for the South Bay Lakers, the team’s G League affiliate.

Net Worth Breakdown

Celebrity Net Worth lists Artest’s fortune at $30 million, a figure that lines up with several other independent estimates placing it between $30 million and $40 million. Like most celebrity net worth figures, this is a public estimate rather than a number Artest or his team has confirmed, and it can shift as trackers account for new business income or spending.

The gap between his career NBA earnings, reported at somewhere between $77 million and $83 million in salary alone, and his current net worth mostly comes down to taxes, agent fees, and years of living and investing off that income.

His biggest single contract came from the Lakers: a five-year deal worth roughly $33.9 million signed in 2009, paying him about $7.2 million a season at its peak. Earlier deals with the Bulls (four years, $5.4 million) and the Pacers (six years, $40.8 million) built the foundation before that.

Income Sources

Most of Artest’s wealth traces back to his NBA salary, but that salary took a while to arrive at rookie-level comfort. As a first-year Chicago Bull in 1999, he reportedly kept a part-time job at Circuit City for the employee discount, a detail that has become one of the more repeated stories from his early career. Sneaker and apparel deals added to his income once he was established: he wore Nike, Adidas, And1, and Dada at different points early on, then signed with K1X in 2005 and later Peak while playing in China, along with a tie-in to the BALL’N sneaker brand.

He also earned money outside basketball. Artest released a rap album, My World, in 2006, later produced the sports drama When the Bell Rings, and starred in the 2010 reality series They Call Me Crazy. He has appeared on Dancing with the Stars, Celebrity Big Brother, and Key and Peele, and in 2023 he competed on The Masked Singer as “Cuddle Monster.”

Since retiring, Artest has built out the Artest Management Group in Beverly Hills, which includes a division that helps athletes with tax preparation and a separate film arm. He also launched XvsX Sports, a subscription-based platform offering training sessions for players at different skill levels, and in 2023 he partnered with MOORvision Technologies on Ucam, a wearable camera built to capture an athlete’s point of view during games. More recently, reports have described plans for an investment fund tied to the Artest Management Group aimed at sports, real estate, healthcare, and web3 projects, though the fund’s final size and launch date have not been confirmed publicly.

Family

Artest married Kimsha Hatfield, later known for appearing on Basketball Wives LA, in 2003. The couple had three children, Sadie, Ron Artest III, and Diamond, before divorcing in 2009. Ron Artest III went on to play college basketball at Cal State Northridge and briefly turned pro himself in the G League and overseas. Artest also has a son, Jeron, from an earlier relationship.

He married Maya Sandiford, a Canadian model of Japanese and Canadian descent who studied at the University of British Columbia, in 2018. He later adopted her last name to become Metta Sandiford-Artest in 2020, a gesture he has described as a tribute to her. The couple welcomed a son together in 2024, Artest’s fifth child, after Maya spoke openly about a difficult first trimester.

Physical Stats

NBA rosters listed Artest at 6 feet 7 inches and 260 pounds throughout his career. In a Power 106 radio interview, though, he admitted his actual height is closer to 6 foot 5 and a half, a gap that is common between a team’s official program listing and a player’s real measurement. At 260 pounds for most of his career, he was on the heavier end for a small forward, which suited the physical, hard-nosed defensive style he built his reputation on.

Between the on-court reputation and the height debate, Ron Artest’s net worth and career still get discussed regularly, nearly a decade after he last played in the league.