Gilbert Arenas Continues To Embarrass Himself

Added on Oct 27, 2010 by Jason Kearney in

NBA

There’s no shortage of ‘busts’ in sports–players who never pan out despite a big financial investment in them by their teams. And then there’s players who have demonstrated considerable talent, but after signing a huge contract figure that they’ve done their work and do nothing to justify the financial outlay. In terms of contributing the least effort for the most money, there’s probably not anyone in any sport who can come close to the Washington Wizards’ Gilbert Arenas. As the Wizards try to rebuild around top draft pick John Wall they have no clue what to expect from ‘Agent Zero’–or even if he’ll show up for practice on a given day.

Arenas definitely has the talent to be a NBA scorer, and a very good one. He averaged 25.5 points per game in 2004-05, 29.3 PPG in 2005-06 and 28.4 in 2006-07. Other than a 22.6 PPG average in 32 games in 2009-2010 (we’ll get that in a moment) he hasn’t averaged more than 20 PPG since. Still, he’s a guy who has the talent to put up 20+ PPG on a nightly basis in the NBA. At least he could if he were able to stay in the lineup–he’s played a total of 47 games in the last three seasons due to injuries and suspensions.

After the 2007-2008 season–in which he’d played only 8 games due to knee injury–he managed to convince the Wizards to sign him to a 6 year, $111 million contract that has to rank among the dumbest personnel moves in NBA history. After signing the big deal, he played in only two games the following season (making roughly $9 million per game if you’re wondering).

It would be one thing if Arenas was a hard working guy who’d just had some bad luck with injury, but he’s not. He only played 32 games in 2009-2010 due to his infamous locker room argument with Jarvis Crittendon over gambling debts during which both players went all Wild Wild West and pulled guns on each other. Arenas was suspended for the rest of the season and served 30 days in a halfway house for violating the draconian gun laws in the District of Columbia.

The Wizards finally caught some good luck in the off-season, winning the NBA Draft Lottery and using the #1 pick to select John Wall from Kentucky. Arenas reacted to this with his characteristic class, suggesting that the ‘town wasn’t big enough’ for both players. The general idea was to play Wall and Arenas in the backcourt together, but that’s not worked out so far. During the preseason, he was fined because he faked an injury to get out of playing a preseason game. He’s also had legit injuries–a minor ankle sprain and a pulled groin muscle. His biggest problem is his attitude–he just doesn’t act like he wants to play. He’s missed the last three practices and even head coach Flip Saunders doesn’t have a clue what to expect:

“We need him, there’s no question. You take a guy that last year, before he went out, he was a 22-point scorer and 7½ assists, so you’d like to put that in your lineup. What it does is it puts more pressure on your main guards, John and Kirk, those guys maybe have to play more minutes than maybe what you’d like them to until you get him back, whenever that is.”

The Wizards are in a no-win position with ‘Agent Zero’. They can’t trade him because no one wants to take on his huge contract and especially assuming that risk on an injury prone head case. There was some talk that the team would void his contract following the gun fiasco of last season, but his admission of guilt in court make that a tough thing to do. Don’t be surprised if at some point the Wizards just eat the huge contract and cut Arenas loose–with the team trying to rebuild around Wall it would be a classic case of addition by subtraction and the best move they could make.