For Gilbert Arenas, It Gets Deeper

Think back to last decade. Did you have any unfulfilled compulsion to learn every detail of Gilbert Arenas’ life? No? Too bad. It looks like we’re going to get everything anyway.In the increasingly bizarre saga of Arenas’ fall from grace in Washington, the revelations of this excellent Washington Post piece seem almost like footnotes. But consider how odd it would be for any other star NBA player with a nine-digit contract to be involved in any one of the following, and how normal it seems for Arenas to have done all three:

⇥Arenas, a notorious practical joker, often crossed the line of acceptable decorum. The example often cited was how Arenas once defecated in teammate Andray Blatche’s shoe during Blatche’s rookie season.⇥After former Wizard Awvee Storey and Arenas got into a wrestling match during practice two years ago, Arenas promised revenge. Posing as his teammate on the road, he entered Storey’s hotel room, copied his car key and express-mailed the key back to the District, where his friend promptly put Storey’s car up on blocks in the arena garage. When Storey returned to the locker room, ashen-faced over the theft of his wheels, Arenas rolled one of his rims across the locker room.⇥He had apparently scripted an even more elaborate -- and uncouth -- opening for the next night in Cleveland, in which he would affect a gimp-legged walk like John Wayne and draw at 10 paces with (Nick) Young, his also-playful teammate.That’s a juvenile prank, a prank that involved grand theft auto, fraud, and breaking and entering, and the sort of stupendously awful judgment in the name of humor that has been Arenas’ hallmark. And yet the story also alleges that Arenas was sometimes fined by the Wizards -- then had his money returned. Such is the life of the guy with a journeyman’s sense of the world and franchise-fixture talent.

This is a story that will not end for a while. It is a story that with fascinate and flummox in equal measure. And it is a story that is as unique to Gilbert Arenas as Arenas was unique in the NBA’s culture.

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