Get this — Gilbert Arenas feels disrespected by the Washington Wizards. Per the Washington Post…
A person close to Arenas said Thursday that Arenas believes President Ernie Grunfeld and the Wizards management failed to support him following his locker room confrontation on Dec. 21 with teammate Javaris Crittenton.
Arenas, the person close to the player said, has told NBA investigators that his flippant behavior following the incident, including the pantomiming of pistols before a game that led to an indefinite suspension from Stern, was because he felt the Wizards organization had turned its back on him.
“If your own franchise, the people you considered family, weren’t there for you when you needed them most, would you want to play for them and be around them anymore?” said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Arenas “was wrong for bringing guns into the locker room, and it’s going to mean pleading guilty to a felony. It’s serious business. But the way this came out and how Ernie and the organization handled the facts makes you wonder if he will ever play for them again.”
Let me get this straight: This clown brings guns into his place of business, threatens (jokingly or not) a teammate over a gambling debt, and expects the team to “support” him? When they don’t live up to his expectations, he mocks the situation during pregame festivities and them blames the organization’s lack of support for his complete lack of tact (and common sense)?
A quote later in the story sums it up best…
“Until Gilbert realizes none of this would have happened if he hadn’t brought guns in the locker room and accepts responsibility for his actions, he won’t be welcomed back anywhere,” said an NBA official on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
The Wizards need to do everything they can to void Arenas’s contract. They’ve already paid him $40 million of a deal worth $121 million, so it’s not like he’s going to walk away with nothing.
Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas was charged with felony gun possession on Thursday in connection with a Dec. 21 locker room confrontation with a teammate.
Prosecutors charged Arenas with one count of carrying a pistol without a license, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. But Arenas reached a plea deal that could result in much less or even no jail time, according to the Washington Post.
Over on TrueHoop, J.A. Adande speculates (prior to the plea deal being announced) that the Wizards will want to terminate Arenas’s contract.
As far as criminal behavior, there have been countless misdemeanors that have received only minor suspensions from the league, including a seven-game suspension for Stephen Jackson for firing a gun outside an Indianapolis strip club in 2006.
A felony charge leaves no gray area. Nor is there much room for feelings. In the Wizards organization there is genuine concern for Gilbert Arenas the person, still a likable guy despite his horrendous decision, now facing the ultra-serious prospect of up to five years in prison. But if the case were to conclude with a guilty plea or felony conviction and a prison sentence it’s unimaginable that they would want to keep his salary cap-clogging contract on their books. There’s also a sense Stern will use this as a strong example of the penalties for violating his ban of guns on team property. One Wizards source has feared Stern’s punishment more than the court’s all along.
The Wizards are in a tough spot. If they try to void his contract and fail, then they’re stuck with a player who is due to make more than $80 million over the next four years and knows that the team tried to get rid of him. If they do manage to void his contract, they’ll lose him with no compensation. At this point, Arenas is more than a hindrance than a help, and the Wizards would be far better off rebuilding from scratch (or building around Caron Butler).
We’re told the Washington Wizards have told D.C. cops they have locker room surveillance video but are having trouble downloading it. The Geek Squad — aka computer-savvy detectives — are going to the Wizards organization today to help.
And get this — a source connected with the investigation tells TMZ the Wizards have been “over cooperative” with cops — as the source says, “almost as if they want Arenas to go down.”
Why would the Wizards want to go down? Hmm. Maybe it’s the four years and $80 million remaining on his contract. If he gets into serious trouble with the law, the Wizards may be able to void his contract.
Arenas’ contract would be nullified if convicted of a felony. Instead of having a team salary of $79 million, the Wizards would sit at a far more manageable $62 million, with their largest, long-term obligation magically off the books.
Making matters worse (or maybe better, from the Wizards perspective), Arenas did not have a license for the guns (TMZ).
The NBA’s collective bargaining agreement clearly states that a contract can be voided if a player “at any time, fails, refuses, or neglects to conform his personal conduct to standards of good citizenship, good moral character (defined here to mean not engaging in acts of moral turpitude, whether or not such acts would constitute a crime), and good sportsmanship …” It could be argued that any criminal charges leveled against Arenas would constitute a failure in personal conduct.
I’m a little torn on this issue. Part of me would like to see the Wizards suffer for signing a player coming off of an injury to such a bloated contract. But given his lack of remorse, Arenas should pay for what he did, and if that means the franchise can erase his deal from the books, then so be it.
I like the guy’s quirkiness, but this is ridiculous.
Worm your way into your second gun-related hassle of your professional career? Passable, to a certain extent. Most people Gilbert’s age (or, really, half his age) would understand that even bringing four unloaded weapons into the workplace is a no-no of the highest order, but Gilbert’s a professional athlete.
Even though he grew up broke, even though he’s less than a decade removed from remembering “what it was like,” he’s still a professional athlete.
And professional athletes, as has been proven time and again, year after year, just have no idea how life actually works. It’s not a basketball thing, or an African-American thing, or even an American thing. Follow the Sunday papers for the latest on the various soccer ball-kicking types overseas, if you don’t believe me. Or even the international rulers of open-wheel driving organizations.
Living in a bubble. That’s what it’s called. Some of our politicians live in a bubble. Our movie stars live in a bubble. And our athletes live in a bubble.
Only in a bubble does it seem okay to take four unloaded weapons to work. Common sense would tell most people that this is not a good idea, but common sense has a tough time surviving in a bubble. The aforementioned people only interact with a select few, and most of those lucky folks are living in their own bubbles.
Whenever a black celebrity makes headlines, the Rev. Al Sharpton has to comment. Here is what he said about the lack of outrage about the Gilbert Arenas/Javaris Crittenton standoff in the Washington Wizards locker room late last month.
“If it had been a white player pointing a gun at a black player, there would have been much more of an uproar. It’s almost as if people are saying, ‘Well, we don’t expect anything better from our black athletes.’”
Duh. Anytime you add race to an issue it’s going to create more of an uproar. If it had been a white athlete pulling a gun on a black athlete, or vice versa, it would have created a bigger stir because now race is added to the mix. If Sharpton wanted to make a stronger point, he should have said that there would have been more of an uproar if two white athletes were involved. Not that I agree, but at least the point holds some water.
I think the story came and went quickly due to the timing (during the holidays) and the fact that no shots were fired. We hear stories all the time about athletes firing shots (or being shot at) outside of bars or strip clubs, but this is the first time (that I can remember, anyway) that one athlete pulled a gun on another at work.
Sharpton does have a point about how President Obama attended a Wizards game at the same time that Arenas was storing guns in his locker, but that doesn’t have anything to do with race.
An NBA investigation into Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas’ possession of guns inside the team’s locker room has been linked to a confrontation with teammate Javaris Crittenton, multiple sources told Yahoo! Sports.
The league’s ongoing probe hopes to determine whether Arenas had accessed any of his unloaded firearms while engaged in the dispute prior to a team practice at the Verizon Center on Dec. 21 in Washington. Tensions between Arenas and Crittenton escalated because of a festering disagreement between the two players, sources said.
NBA all-star Gilbert Arenas and his Washington Wizards teammate Javaris Crittenton drew guns on each other in the team’s locker room during a Christmas Eve dispute over a gambling debt, The Post has learned.
It was the three- time all-star Arenas, 27, who went for his gun first, sources said, draw ing on the 22-year-old Crittenton, who quickly brandished a firearm as well.
The duel in DC — unprecedented in sports history — was sparked when Crittenton became enraged at the veteran guard for refusing to make good on a gambling debt, a source said.
“I’m not your punk!” Crittenton shouted at Arenas, according to a league source close to the Wizards.
That prompted Arenas to draw on Crittenton, who then also grabbed for a gun, league security sources said.
A playground pal of Crittenton’s from Atlanta, Kendrick “Bookie Ball” Long, confirmed the locker-room standoff and said he learned of it directly from the third-year player out of Georgia Tech.
“He [Arenas] was f- – -ing with him; he [Crittenton] was just defending himself!” declared Long, who said the dispute was over money but would not elaborate.
Arenas has a reputation of being funny crazy, but this just sounds like crazy crazy.
Shaq says Cavs are the best team he’s ever been on…at least on paper. Shaq has never been one to shy away from a juicy quote, but in touting his team, he calls Anderson Varejao “one of the top forwards in the league” and mentioned rookie Darnell Jackson by his nickname (D-Block). Um, okay. If it’s all the same, we’ll wait to see how this team fares on the court, especially in the playoffs. Did Shaq meet with the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department?Shaq refused to confirm the report: “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told The News-Herald. “Undercover officers aren’t allowed to talk about what’s going on.” Classic.
Andrew Bogut is ready for more work. Bogut is coming off a back injury that kept him out for much of the last four months of the 2008-09 season. Given his career numbers — 11.9 ppg, 8.7 rpg — he’s not a bust, but he’s certainly not what the Bucks were expecting when they took him with the #1 pick back in 2005. Milwaukee passed on Chris Paul and Deron Williams, two franchise-caliber point guards, and even Marvin Williams might be looking better right now since he’s been able to stay healthy. Bogut played in 82 games his rookie season, but since then, he has missed 27% of his team’s games and the Bucks haven’t made the postseason. This is a big year for the Aussie, who needs to prove that his contract (worth $60 million) is justified.
Stephen Jackson to the Cavs? This rumor has Jackson heading to Cleveland for Zydrunas Ilgauskas and his expiring contract. The Cavs are already loaded at the wing with LeBron, Jamario Moon and Anthony Parker, but the saga of Delonte West, might have the Cavs looking to add to the arsenal. However, it’s going to be tough to find minutes for all of these players as it stands, and Jackson isn’t one to sit quietly if he’s not getting what he believes to be appropriate playing time.
Is Gilbert Arenas changing his game? Arenas has always been a shoot-first point guard, but he only took five shots and dished out 10 assists against the Grizzlies on Tuesday. HC Flip Saunders wants him to be more aggressive, so we’re more likely to see a watered-down version of 2006 Agent Zero than some new, pass-first variety.
Nets looking to run offense through Brook Lopez. HC Lawrence Frank redesigned his offense to feature Lopez at the top of the key and at the elbows. He wants Lopez to facilitate, so expect the second-year center’s numbers to rise with all the additional touches.
Gilbert Arenas said he’s doing great with his knee rehab, but criticized the Wizards for — get this — letting him play when he said that he could play.
“If you have a kid that loves basketball, that eats, sleeps, drinks and thinks basketball and all he knows is basketball and he gets hurt and he’s your franchise player, you need to hold him back from himself,” Arenas told the newspaper. “If I’m saying I feel good and you know it’s supposed to take six months, instead of letting me at four months run … they should have held me back. Rather than saying, ‘Let’s let this guy do what he wants and use him to sell tickets’ — sometimes you have to protect players from themselves. I don’t feel like I got that type of protection. But, I don’t judge them for that. Some things just happen. I told them I felt OK because I wanted to play, and they did what they did.”
Man, that takes balls, doesn’t it? Sometimes you have to protect players from themselves. Give me a break.
Athletes come back early from injuries all the time. Sometimes it backfires and sometimes it doesn’t. If Arenas told the team he was ready to go, it’s not the Wizards’ fault that he wasn’t. It’s his fault.
Had the team pressured Arenas to get back on the court, then this criticism would be justified. But for Arenas to blame the Wizards for his mistake is pure projection.
The Wizards, or Ernie Grunfeld in particular, has invested a lot into this group with Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison. I think he really wants to see how far they can go if they are healthy. Jamison is the only Wizard to start in the past four postseasons and he was a one-man show in 2007, back when Gilbert and Caron Butler were out against Cleveland. They signed with the intention of keeping him. The best time to move Jamison was at the trade deadline last February.
NBCWashington.com’s Kyle Weidie expands on that line of thinking…
More important than the investments of Grunfeld are the interests of Abe Pollin. The aging owner is willing to do what it takes to compete for a title, but anyone familiar with Pollin’s modus operandi knows that doesn’t mean trading away an upstanding member of the community like Antawn.
Sure, the “perfect” opportunity could come knocking. But NBA GMs, especially in these economic times, won’t be rapping their knuckles on doors for a soon-to-be 33-year-old with three years and $40+ million left on his contract. Isiah Thomas is no longer running a team, people.
One look at the Wizards’ payroll and it’s easy to see that it’s a mess. Gilbert Arenas’s contract is ridiculous for a guy who has missed 91% of his team’s games over the last two years, and the Wizards still owe him $96 million over the next five seasons. Jamison is almost 33 and has more than $40 million remaining on his contract. The only truly reasonable deal amongst Washington’s “Big Three” is Caron Butler’s contract, but it’s also the shortest at two years and $21 million. Arenas and Jamison are virtually unmovable right now, and the Wizards would be dumb to trade Butler, who is arguably the team’s best all-around player.
Grunfeld wants to see what this group can do, and that’s great because he doesn’t really have any other options. He has hitched his wagon to this trio — or specifically to Arenas and Jamison — and is hoping they can succeed. But even with a healthy Arenas, does anyone really think the Wizards are a legit contender? Brendan Haywood is playing better (when healthy), but the Wizards still need a couple of big men to step into prominent roles. Washington has the fifth pick in the draft, but it is no sure thing that they’ll be able to find someone to help right away (Jordan Hill?), and the team is most definitely in “win now” mode.
My guess is that Arenas comes back reasonably strong and the Wizards finish the season as a #6 or #7 seed in the East, likely to be dismissed in the first round of the playoffs by Boston, Cleveland or Orlando. That’s probably a best-case scenario, and it’s not all that good, especially when the franchise is locked into this roster for the foreseeable future.
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