Yes. “Destructive.”

That’s the word I settled on. After considering “awful” … “horrible” … “distracting” …”uncoachable” … “deranged” … and a couple that failed the definition I set in the headline — “train wreck” and “loose cannon” and “disaster waiting to happen.”

Ron Artest fascinates me, in a negative, very NBA sort of way.  He clearly has talent. He clearly could be a help to the Houston Rockets or some other team. Yet he is not. And parsing that is something I’ve been working at since this series began.

Here is one point of departure: If LeBron James and Dennis Rodman had a love child … it would be Ron Artest.

Here’s why:

He is about the right size, 6-6, 245 to LeBron’s 6-8, 250 and Rodman’s 6-7, 228. He has a vaguely similar skill set. Like the other two, he is well-muscled even by NBA standards, has no apparent body fat and is physically intimidating.

But in other ways, he is about at the midpoint of those two players in terms of overall impact, which suggests our NBA Love Child has plenty of both parents in him. He’s halfway between a journeyman with one or two elite skills (Worm) and megastar with niggling downsides to his game (LBJ). Halfway between potentially destructive sideshow (D-Rod) and franchise player (King James). All he lacks, actually, are some good nicknames. Or any nickname at all, far as I know.

Like Rodman and James, Artest is first and foremost an impressive specimen. He has explosive power. He has great physical gifts. He probably could be a world-class decathlete, like the other two. He probably could play in the NFL, like the other two. (I see Artest at outside linebacker, Rodman at a passing-down  defensive end, James at tight end.)

Like both Worm and LeBron, Artest is a force of nature. But their gifts of strength, speed and explosiveness are much greater than their fine-motor skills. (And before you tell me that LeBron has great fine-motor skills, I would cite his three-point shooting, which he just now is beginning to get under control, and his free-throw shooting, which is barely adequate — low 70s in percentage makes.) Artest, like Rodman and LeBron, is not nearly as gifted in hand-eye-coordination skills. That is, I can’t imagine any of them playing baseball with any success. At all. Think Michael Jordan and his Birmingham Barons stats … and cut them in half. If these guys played tennis, they would be all aces and double faults. If they were golfers, monsters off the tee and horrible around the greens.

What makes Artest fascinating — and different that his “parents” — is his self-delusion: Rodman and James actually know what they brought/bring to the court. They understood their roles from the start. For Worm, all-world rebounding and suffocating defense. For LeBron, team leadership and go-to guy who can do anything except knock your socks off with his shooting.

Artest has skills that are refined versions of Rodman’s — he could be a great rebounder (but, tellingly, he is not) and he is an excellent defender. Artest is a better shooter but not a great one, not even a good one, really. He should shoot more often than did Rodman, who rarely attempted a shot outside the paint (he went entire seasons trying fewers threes than Artest already has thrown up, 57, in this series) — but Artest thinks he has LeBron’s talent package, at the offensive end.

Artest believes he is a great scorer, yet he shot a miserable 40.1 percent from the field in the regular season. He doesn’t think he needs to rebound (averaging 5.1 per game in his career, averaging 3.4 in the playoffs), but he would be very good at it.

Thus, at critical moments in the last two games of the Lakers-Rockets series, Artest has behaved as if he were LeBron when he actually is more than a little Worm, hogging the ball for entire possessions, standing around near midcourt, dribbling out the clock and ultimately jacking up threes or making bowling-lane charges into the paint.

And it is killing the Rockets. Maybe more surely than Kobe Bryant is killing them. Or Pau Gasol.

The Rockets didn’t get to the second round of the playoffs by being about Ron Artest. They got here because they have a great center, Yao Ming, who should be the focal point of everything they do, and because they have a cast of nice complimentary players who do, in fact, understand their limitations and their roles. Shane Battier, Aaron Brooks, Carl Landry, Luis Scola, Carl Landry, Chuck Hayes. (OK, not Von Wafer.) These guys play within the system and make it better. See Game 1, for proof.

Artest, however, is too often outside the system — and too often not under control. Of his emotions. And by coach Rick Adelman.

I thought Adelman was a fine coach until Games 2 and 3 of this series, when he let Artest destroy the Rockets’ offensive continuity by attempting to take over the game. By going 1-on-5 for significant chunks of time, an approach only the truly great (Kobe, LeBron, Wade, maybe Chris Paul, among active players) can get away with.

Adelman should recognize when Artest’s considerable ego is turning the Rockets into a one-man team, overshadowing his significant talents. And I imagine Adelman does recognize it. But that he is doing nothing about it says one of two things: Adelman has no better idea for running his offense, or he fears losing whatever tenuous control he has over Artest by benching him for any length of time. Neither concept is flattering to Rick Adelman’s coaching skills.

At the end, Artest’s greatest flaw is inside his skull. He is an impulsive, overly emotional and self-destructive talent. As was Rodman. But Worm, at least, could sublimate his madness while he was between the lines. Usually. Artest cannot, because he has just enough of LBJ’s basketball talent — but not his analytical mind or his self-control.

Artest may be leading the Rockets in scoring, but he is killing their chances of winning this series — which were quite decent, after stealing Game 1.

If Yao Ming is seriously hurt, and can’t play or contribute much in Game 4, Artest will no doubt being even more convinced he has to be a star, and that will lead the Rockets to almost sure destruction. Lots of wildly inaccurate threes, reckless charges into the lane, lots of fouls and a fair chance of being ejected from the game — as he has the past two.

It probably is no accident that Artest teams have had marginal postseason success. This is his 10th season, but his teams have made the playoffs only five times. They have gotten out of the first round only twice: The 2004 Pacers got to the Eastern Conference finals (the season before Artest had a starring role in the into-the-stands madness in Detroit) … and these Rockets made the second round.

Ron Artest, then, while being in many ways similar to Rodman and James is, at the end of the day, less useful than either one.

Those other two, through different approaches, were winners. Rodman embraced his role, and he played for two championship teams, in Detroit. James is truly great, and is headed for his second Finals, and maybe his first championship, and he is only 24.

Artest has never played in a final, and probably never will, because his self-delusion will never allow him to be a useful piece of a machine. He will always want to be The Man, and he quite clearly is not up to that role.

Before the Rockets are eliminated, I expect another couple of out-of-control explosions, with more technical fouls, perhaps another ejection or two, and Artest making headlines for all the wrong reasons, same as he always has.