EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- One day after being waived by the Los Angeles Lakers via the amnesty provision, Metta World Peace said he doesn't want any NBA team to make a bid to pick him up off waivers. Not his hometown New York Knicks or the Brooklyn Nets. And not the Lakers' Staples Center cohabitants, the Los Angeles Clippers.

"I don't really want to play for anybody," World Peace said Friday at the Lakers' practice facility. "I don't want to go anywhere. I want to go to China, or coach or play arena football."

World Peace said he has spoken to Yao Ming about joining his former Houston Rockets teammate's Chinese team, the Shanghai Sharks. He said he's had conversations with representatives from "a couple other teams" in China, as well.

World Peace recently completed a trip to Beijing and Qingdao, which further fueled his idea of playing in China should he be waived. A league source told ESPNLosAngeles.com that World Peace has explored the option of playing in China through conversations with former NBA players who have made the leap, figuring out if the path blazed by the likes of Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis and Gilbert Arenas would be right for him.

"You don't live twice," World Peace said. "You're not 33 twice. You won't be able to play in China at a good level again. I wouldn't be able to play in China again averaging, maybe, 40 or more points. That would be fun."

It could all just be an entertaining bluff from World Peace, of course. The Lakers still have to pay him his $7.7 million salary for next season, but he is now on the market and teams with cap room can claim him off waivers via a bidding process.

If a team puts a bid on him and World Peace chooses to retire rather than report to it, he would put his entire salary at risk, including money owed to him by the Lakers. It would be an unprecedented scenario; no player released via amnesty that has been picked up off waivers has gone that route since the current collective bargaining agreement went into place in December 2011.

Should World Peace clear the 48-hour waiver-style bidding process without any team making a bid, he would become an unrestricted free agent and would be free to sign with the team of his choice [including teams above the luxury-tax threshold, which still could offer him the veteran's minimum]. An amnestied player may not be re-signed by the team that released him, however, until the contract that was waived expired [which in World Peace's case would be the summer of 2014].

Jose Morales, a longtime friend and confidant of World Peace, told ESPNNewYork.com earlier this week that the veteran small forward would consider retirement if a team claimed him from a city for which he did not want to play.

"If one of these small-market teams picks him up, he won't be happy with that," Morales said. "He doesn't want to play there."

Morales said World Peace would be open to playing for the Clippers, but if he can't stay in Los Angeles, he would want to play only in New York.

World Peace, however, said the ship has sailed on playing in his hometown.