Somewhere between a lack of judgment and media sensationalism lies the Gilbert Arenas saga. Gil is currently awaiting a late March sentencing date where he could receive upwards of six months in prison. Charles, Kenny and Ernie recently spoke about the entire situation during a recent Inside The NBA telecast. Regardless whether you tend to agree with them or not, clips like this make these make it one of the premiere sports shows in rotation. Chuck reflects the sentiments that Gil’s mistake doesn’t warrant him losing the remainder of his contract (somewhere near $90M). Kenny, on the other hand, believes a suspension is the only logical explanation for his actions, while Ernie poses the $50M question, “If this violates his contract, then why can’t they rip it up?”
And somehow, someway, I find myself right in the middle. He deserves it, but he doesn’t. I’m of the belief the entire story was never truly told. That’s water under the bridge in the grand scheme of things, I assume. Regardless you made your own bed, Gil. Make it up or lay in it.
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In some ways, Arenas reminds me of Vick in that his team leveraged his stupidity to go after his contract.
And I think that’s going to be the real story here for athletes going forward. Can/should sports leagues terminate contracts based on off the court bad behavior? (And ultimately, what constitutes bad behavior if no one gets hurt?)
Secondly I have a bigger issue of privacy here. This isn’t Plaxico in a club. This is someone—arguably another player/Wizard personal—relaying a private event to authorities that involved multiple people yet only one person is being held accountable. Based on all accounts Crittendon should be falling to, but he isn’t.
That in and of itself will create an added level of discomfort among players knowing that they can get snitched out by their own teammates, trainers, coaches etc with no repercussions to anyone but them.
But as Tinsley noted, Arenas isn’t innocent here. He deserves a degree of punishment here. But…
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Gilbert shouldn’t be cast as the martyr right now. Javaris Crittenton chambered a bullet and hasn’t gotten any sort of punishment, while Gilbert flashed an unloaded gun and is losing his entire career…
at the end of the day, athletes should have learned a whole lot from Plax and Vick.
The only reason he’s in this spot is because he under-performed his contract. He’s only played about 1/10 of the schedule for the last 3 years after hitting the Wiz for 111 million. He gave them an out, point blank.
bottom line he screwed himself and in screwing himself he didn’t say hey i’m sorry… he said ha ha i got guns look at me.
does he deserves to lose his contract not really… he does deserve to be suspended..
but to me if these cats don’t start to realize everyone is looking at you and u can’t get away with anything a lot more folks are gonna be losing contracts.
Critterton doesn’t make enough money for them to go after him. They’re more pissed that Gil has been injury prone because when he’s on the court he does fine. That whole team’s core (Butler, Jamison & Areans) is snake bitten so they’re frustrated that they actually spent money to do something and have no results. Playing the Cavs in the 1st round every year doesn’t help the cause either.
I’m not sure if his contract should be voided or not, but he really should have known better though. They should probably just not pay him until he comes back to the court.
I’m not excusing Gilbert at all Gotty. It’s just interesting how companies are begining to use personal behavior to get out of contracts and guaranteed compensation arrangements with employees.
If T.I. and Wayne can only serve a year…than Arenas should only serve a few months or even just pay a fine.
And there seems to be a great general attitude of immaturity in professional sports; perhaps its because they’re paid for playing a child’s game.
And Barkley has a point. It’s all about money.
Yeah Ron Artest fucking punched a bystander, and his behind is on best team in the West. I’m with Barkley.
I co-sign with Conseco; cuz if we want to get into personal behavior, Kobe, Shaq and a whole plethora of players would be off teams for gettin they’re Tiger on.
The Bulls strung Dennis Rodman for years when his personal life was a freakin freak show. And Sprewell continued to play after choking his coach. Now all of a sudden they want to have morals?
Ray Lewis was charged w/ MURDER? His ass is still playing.
every contract has a personal conduct clause these days. dont sign it if you dont want to follow it and leave it up to the team/company you work for to enforce it.
u guys are all way off the mark. This was a situation that happened at his J O B and that has nuttin to do with bustin a nut in a skeezer outside of work on your own personal. Also people are bringing up Crittendon (sp?) and don’t know the story. They’ve been to court already and official statements have been made (whether false or true) in a court of law. Gil brought guns to the lockerroom and put one for crittendon (sp?) and said if he wanted shoot him then they would have a dual. They were all Gil’s guns and he created the situation. As far as getting paid.. he shouldn’t be paid for the past two years imo as he didn’t play at all for one year then only 10 games for another season. if you don’t play you don’t pay and any other company out there can fire you if you violate their policy and not pay so this shouldn’t be any different.
You still gotta EARN your money though.
Gil took 3 guns to his JOB. Can’t do that point blank. Are the Wiz trying to get out of paying him that money based on his conduct? Probably. Gil is at fault. We won’t see Gil on a basketball court until the end of next season or the start of the 12-13 season.
There’s two sides to this, the Wizards seem to just be trying to get out of a contract, but the NBA’s suspension is definitely warranted. I think Arena deserves to pay a price, but also deserves a second chance.
As someone that worked in PR for an NBA team for nearly 5 years, people need to realize that it’s not just the players in the locker room. There’s equipment guys, trainers, marketing/PR people and maybe most importantly, ball boys who are usually in high school, some minors.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to go into a players locker, or seen a ball boy go into a players locker. I would have been extremely uncomfortable coming across a gun in a players locker. Things could have been far worse if the wrong person came across one of those guns.
It doesn’t matter if the Wizards are using this situation to get out of his contract but no pun intended he gave them the ammunition to put the wheels in motion. If you’re dumb enough to fuck up a 111 million dollar contract then you didn’t deserve it in the first place. The NBA is already trying to shed it’s “thug” image and should know that any type of behavior especially with guns will be the kiss of death. In the last 3 years or so we’ve seen the most exciting QB in the L go to prison for dogfighting, a Super Bowl winning WR shoot himself in the leg, The biggest athlete in the world see his squeaky clean image and possibly career tarnished at the hands (and asses) of countless mistresses and now a basketball star whose paycheck will mirror his jersey number. 2000-2010 the decade of the dumb black athlete.
fcuk a second chance..
thats bullshit. these athletes have such an incredible ‘first chance’ that if you ignorantly give someone an excuse to take it from you, then you fcuking deserve it.
im sorry but sooo many kids are stomping at the bits, praying twice every night to leave the slum they call home and just wipe the sweat off of an NBA court.
meanwhile, dickheads like said-name-player, blessed with unholy amounts of talent, invent new goddamn ways to gift wrap their careers and give them back over to ‘the man’.
sorry dipshit. its obviously never struck you how blessed you are to be paid millions to play a sport you love and would probably play for free. Oh yeah not to mention you still get paid and live lavishly even if you DONT play. SMFH.
you get a second chance for stealing blow pops from seven-eleven. not for pissing on an amazing opportunity. David Stern needs to stick his foot up Gil’s ass and boot him right back down to earth where lowly non-athletic humans pay 75 bucks a ticket to see his lame ass play (or not). maybe hindsight will show him the error of his ways.
not to clown Gil in particular, but im sick and tired of seeing these athletes not use common sense, then beg for second chances. youre on the pedestal of society. risk your career for stupid shit, and you deserve everything that happens to you.
Here is a take on it no one wants to say.. if you follow the logic of “What COULD happen, players that get caught speeding could cause and accident and hit someone.”
I like how they used the Tiger example.. Tiger is losing SPONSERSHIPS, those are based on his image and not what he is paid to do. What if they said we won’t pay Tiger for winning and/or placing high in tourneys, because he has a weakness for vagina that doesn’t belong to his wife. That is the example that should have been used and trust me I can’t think ANY ONE would agree that that is fair.