Hannah Karp of the WALL STREET JOURNAL has a unintentionally hilarious piece on the entourages of athletes like Ron Artest, Mike Bibby, Floyd Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya. Entourages have been stealing money from athletes since the beginning of time (Athens Olympics?), and Karp coughs up details on the current version of the pandering parasites.

For instance, De La Hoya recently fired his 10-man clan because, “It was a waste of time and a waste of money.”DLH reportedly is saving $400,000 this year thanks to the move. Though now he’ll be forced to go it alone at Macy’s biannual intimates sale.

Somehow, the most entertaining part of the piece involved some of Artest’s past handlers.

During his early playing days, flush with new-found millions, Artest surrounded himself with garden variety thieves from the ‘hood. Highlights:

Last year, he realized that six of his friends, who were living in a four-bedroom house he was leasing for them at $2,500 a month, could jeopardize his career if any trouble occurred at the house. While the six — all producers and artists on his record label — also did odd jobs from time to time for Mr. Artest, “their level of helpfulness was 50%,” says his publicist, Heidi Buech. He sent home four of them in March 2007 and dismissed the last two in July, after the house was broken into while he was doing charity work in Africa.

Mr. Artest’s personal assistant, who grew up with him in the projects but is paid by Mr. Artest’s management company, fields late-night requests for organic cookies, is developing Mr. Artest’s line of athletic wear and was asked recently to remove what Mr. Artest thought were giant snake eggs in his backyard. They turned out to be mushrooms.

Now there’s a gig we could sink our teeth into. Locating Sacremento’s finest, locally-grown organic cookies and quelling Artest’s completely reasonable fear of reptile infestation.

The other plus about working for the Tru Warrior is you never have to worry about going out for Alpo.