I’ve heard of bringing a knife to a gun fight. But bringing a gun to a…locker room fight? Leave it to the clown prince of the NBA’s most dysfunctional franchise, Gilbert Arenas, to make the woeful Wizards even more of a laughingstock than they already are.
Perhaps by now you’ve heard about the latest, most inconceivable (even by this team’s astonishing standards) setback to The Wizard’s image? If not, read it now and believe me later. Stupid story short: Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton allegedly brought guns into the locker room, due to a festering dispute over…a bet. This is one of those incidents where even if only 25% of it is true, it’s still beyond the pale, and if Wizards management wants to avoid irreparable damage, Gilbert’s role in this farce must be treated as intolerable.
(Unfortunately, and adding insult to injury, it is impossible to overlook the fact that the only thing consistent about Arenas since he signed his outrageous contract has been his mouth. The oft-injured, mentally fragile superstar is the ultimate conundrum: a true heart and soul type player except when he doesn’t feel like it, or is not taking months at a time off due to injuries. The type of charismatic superstar who can carry a team, except that he is too busy being a clubhouse cancer. The prototypical prima donna whose act, like most athletes invariably realize too late, is no longer quirky or cute when they fail to deliver on the court: when you are making tons of cash on an imploding team and pull a stunt like this, it is –and should be– virtual career suicide. Except that Arenas is likely in little danger of losing his pay-day, and even if The Wizards cut him loose, plenty of other teams would scramble to secure his services. In this regard, pro sports reaps what it sows; but as long as the bottom line is bustling, it’s a win-win for everyone, right?)
A cliche, unfortunately, cannot be overlooked at this moment: thank goodness Abe Pollin did not live to witness this embarrassment. Pollin, of course, was the man who was entirely responsible for building a once-respectable franchise. It didn’t happen quickly or easily, but after some ugly years, the team actually managed to win it all (in ’78, led by the incomparable Wes Unseld and inspired by coach Dick Motta who famously declared “It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings”, which became an immediate and ubiquitous rallying cry for underdogs everywhere in the sports world). Keep in mind, this was several years before Joe Gibbs rolled into town and started the Redskins dynasty of the ’80s; in 1978 Washington was a pro sports black hole and the Bullets’ championship was the first crown the city captured in 36 years.
Many barren years (and inexplicable, unbelievable draft picks) followed. Then Pollin, in 1995, made the controversial decision to rename the team. It was decried as a cynical marketing ploy, but there were plenty of folks who insisted that Pollin was being completely sincere when he bemoaned the fact that his team’s moniker was unacceptable when so many gun-related deaths were occurring in the city. The dead-on-arrival decision to go with the name Wizards notwithstanding, it was, then –and remains, now– a pretty bold and admirable, if largely symbolic gesture.
So…now we have the team’s most highly paid (but not most important, since we have class acts and ever-reliable anchors named Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison) player makes news for…a gun-related infraction. In the team locker room. With a teammate who has not played a single minute this season. Talk about the gunfight at the They’re-Not-OK Corral.
Hey Gilbert, here’s an idea: if you have a beef, put away the iron phallus and throw down like a man. (And I’m not in any way saying that two grown men fist-fighting is appropriate or mature, but when itchy trigger fingers abetted by gangsta fantasies are the first resort, this is not only childish, but craven. And no soap-box hysteria is necessary to assert that incidents like this one epitomize a backwards and dangerous de-evolution of American culture: everyone can agree on that, right?)
What a punk.
And how sad that his nickname, Agent Zero, would turn out to be so fitting, for all the wrong reasons.
