Don’t Separate the Personality from the Player

Back in September, I wrote a surprisingly stodgy column on the future of Gilbert Arenas.↵Sparked by recent comments from Flip Saunders, I ended up wondering if↵we didn’t just need a new Gil on the floor, but a new attitude to go↵with it. Distracted by DeShawn’s new ink,↵I somehow missed when, days later, Arenas himself went down a similar↵path: “I’m not the entertainer anymore ... When I was entertaining, all↵you guys focused on was my words. Now I’d rather you just focus on my↵basketball.”↵
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↵Thus far, Arenas has followed through on it, even going so far as↵to get a fine. And I guess whatever part of me wrote that other↵column—probably a longtime Gil fan tired of hoping for a return to↵form, and anxious about the inevitable pile-on—is happy with it. But as↵I watch the news coming out of Wizards camp, and monitor the Twitter↵accounts of other Wiz players, it becomes pretty clear to me that a↵dead-serious Gil would be totally out of place on this team. In large↵part, this is because he’d set the tone when he was healthy. If not↵their leader, he was such a strong personality that others couldn’t↵help but be swayed by him. Gil may want to go straight, and Saunders↵may expect him to take the reins of the team. But the levity he brought↵to the team is a big part of their chemistry, their ability to work↵together. Take that away, and suddenly, ironically, a new, improved Gil↵could be detrimental to the team.↵
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