LOS ANGELES -- Ron Artest walked into the room fidgeting, tugging at the sleeves on his wrinkled, blue sport coat. Yes, sport coat. He owns one.

"Had to dig in the back of the closet to find it," he said.

The occasion was not the NBA Finals or even a game at the star-studded Staples Center. Artest was not preparing to strut into some Hollywood party or a TV studio to tape any of the numerous talk shows he'd been on since the Los Angeles Lakers had won a second straight NBA championship. Artest was in a small, dingy classroom set off to the side of a middle school auditorium in East L.A. that was rapidly filling up with hundreds of excited and noisy students.

After the Lakers won the 2010 NBA title, Ron Artest thanked his psychologist, Dr. Santhi Periasamy, for helping him to relax. Garrett Ellwood/NBAE/Getty Images

"Man, I'm nervous," he said to no one in particular.

As he helped himself to the fruit on a table also set with pastries and coffee, in walked security agents surrounding California Rep. Grace Napolitano. She nearly squealed upon seeing Artest, then checked herself and calmly said hello and shook his hand.

It was an unlikely liaison: he a star athlete fresh off his first NBA championship; she a U.S. representative with star power of a far different kind. Yet there they were, at Eastmont Intermediate School to promote federal legislation HR 2531, the Mental Health in Schools Act, and to encourage students to seek counseling if there was trouble in their lives.

"What you're doing today is even more important than winning the world championship," Napolitano said to Artest.

Softly, he answered, "I know."

Artest nearly backed out. Overwhelmed by the idea of having to face publicly not only his own mental health issues but also the pressure of what impact that might have on young, impressionable minds, he was close to canceling.

Artest's past actions have caused many people to think, "That guy is nuts." He appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in only boxer shorts and told a news conference crowd that he wanted to trade the Chargers for the Clippers and that he was sad that Pluto was no longer a planet. During the NBA playoffs last season, he told reporters on either side of him that they could ask questions at the same time "because I can handle that. You're there; you're there," he said, pointing to each ear. "Fire away."

Ron Artest charged into the stands during a game against the Detroit Pistons on Nov. 19, 2004, at the Palace of Auburn Hills. Allen Einstein/Getty Images

And, of course, there was the infamous "Malice at the Palace" in 2004, when Artest charged into the stands in Auburn Hills, Mich., after a fan threw a drink on him. He was suspended 73 games and labeled a social pariah. Oh, yes, and crazy.

But his comments after winning the NBA title in June sparked all this current interest in him and created the unlikely alliance between the representative and sports star.

"I'd like to thank my psychiatrist, Dr. Santhi. She really helped me relax," he told ABC's Doris Burke after Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

It was one of the more irreverent thank-you interviews in recent memory. But the much-maligned and, he said, misunderstood Artest wanted everyone to know that he had not gotten his first ring alone.

"Thank you so much, so difficult to play, so much emotion going on in the playoffs, and she helped me relax," he said.

At that moment, Dr. Santhi Periasamy, a licensed psychologist, was at a concert in Houston, where she lives, with one eye on a television set that had the game on. She had to hide her interest.

"I couldn't make it obvious, and I couldn't really be invested" because of patient-therapist confidentiality ethics, she said. "It would have been awkward for some of the people I was with to all of a sudden see me watching [the NBA Finals] intently."

Because the sound was low, she didn't learn of Artest's thank-you until the next day. A fellow psychologist with whom she had gone to school heard Artest thank "Dr. Santhi" and phoned her from the bathroom in her Los Angeles house. Although she didn't know Periasamy was seeing Artest, she didn't want her husband to hear the conversation, because of her own concerns about confidentiality.

"She said, "I think somebody just said your name on TV," Periasamy said, laughing. "I was shocked. Stunned."

Periasamy began working with Artest in 2008 when he was with the Houston Rockets. A court in Sacramento, when he was with the Kings, had ordered him into therapy after he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor domestic violence. Artest declines to speak about specifics of what happened the night he was arrested, but he spent 10 days in a work-release program and was ordered to undergo counseling.

"The courts made me take anger management, the courts made me take a parenting class, which was great. They suggested you take a marriage class, which I did," he said.

When Artest was traded to the Rockets, he still hadn't finished what the court mandated, so he went in search of a new therapist and found Periasamy. When he completed the court requirements, he decided to continue to see her, finding a soul that calmed him, helped him focus and, he said, helped him become a better basketball player and better man.