Help understanding custom ListCellRenderers

I'm trying to implement a custom ListCellRenderer; I've referred to several books and web articles, but I can't seem to get a sense of how I should do this.

The goal: each object should render as the item's name, right justified, and a metric score left justified.

e.g.
Event One 100
Event Two 234
Event Three 15
etc

My first attempts were along the lines of the example in Core Java volume two, where they create a JLabel inside the getListCellRendererComponent. I tried creating two JLabels, changed the layout to a BorderLayout and inserted the JLabels. This worked for a single item list, but on multi-item lists each cell contains all the data overwriting itself. The authors of that book don't recommend this method because it's constructing new compoenents on every call.

So I tried changing to a method where the real work is done in the paintComponent method; however I have no clue as to how I'ld generate the intended effect working at the Graphics level, nor how to even figure out the getPerferredSize issues.

How should I tackle this? It doesn't feel like it should be as hard as I'm making it.

here's a simple routine

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
class Testing extends JFrame
{
  DefaultListModel dlm = new DefaultListModel();
  JList list = new JList(dlm);
  public Testing()
  {
    setLocation(400,300);
    setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    list.setCellRenderer(new MyRenderer());
    JScrollPane sp = new JScrollPane(list);
    sp.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(100,200));
    getContentPane().add(sp);
    pack();
    dlm.addElement(new String[]{"Event One","100"});
    dlm.addElement(new String[]{"Event Two","234"});
    dlm.addElement(new String[]{"Event Three","15"});
  }
  public static void main(String[] args){new Testing().setVisible(true);}
}
class MyRenderer extends JPanel implements ListCellRenderer
{
  JLabel[] lbl = new JLabel[2];
  public MyRenderer()
  {
    setLayout(new GridLayout(0,2,15,0));
    lbl[0] = new JLabel("",JLabel.RIGHT);
    add(lbl[0]);
    lbl[1] = new JLabel("",JLabel.LEFT);
    add(lbl[1]);
  }
  public Component getListCellRendererComponent(JList list,Object value,
                      int index,boolean isSelected,boolean cellHasFocus)
  {
    lbl[0].setText((String)((String[])value)[0]);
    lbl[1].setText((String)((String[])value)[1]);
    if(isSelected) setBackground(Color.CYAN);
    else setBackground(Color.WHITE);
    return this;
  }
}

Wow. Thank you, your approach makes much more sense that what I've been staring at.