The Official Gilbert Arenas Shrine

[AceDegenerate]

I love how the haters took over this shrine, I'm gonna make some runs into the other shrines and ruin them as well.

[mzaretsk]

imo, he is bsing about his intent to get nick time. it just makes no sense.
- he could have talked to flip about coming off the bench
- he could have kept his trap shut about the 'injury', but he chose to publicize it
- getting nick time in preseason does nothing for his pt when it actually counts

he cant deal with being an afterthought and is pushing his way out of town. and i, for one, welcome getting his contract off the books.

its been real, but its time to share your quirkiness with another fanbase.

[DaRealHibachi]

Yeah, the whole "Gil's acting out b/c he wasn't named captain" is laughable. Gil never seemed to enjoy the captain role and pretty much admitted it on more than one occasion. What were seeing is Gil being Gil. Unfortunately, Gil really can't afford to be Gil right now with the media ready to pounce on his every word or action. The silliness & games Gil got away with playing for years, he can't get away with now. He's gotta recognize that and adjust otherwise the backlash against him is only going to worse.

Truth.com

[LyricalRico]

I love how the haters took over this shrine, I'm gonna make some runs into the other shrines and ruin them as well.

Just don't mess with any of the Ernie Grunfeld threads.

[finnegan]

Guy never seems to quite.

It is almost like he has the humor of a 7th grader! Did he actually think the public would get a kick out of the fake injury-gate?

In adulthood-land, it makes people hate you Gilbert! It is not longer funny like it was in 7th grade to be a jerk.

Not to mention, that you made your coach look stupid.

[Nivek]

Guy never seems to quite.

It is almost like he has the humor of a 7th grader! Did he actually think the public would get a kick out of the fake injury-gate?

In adulthood-land, it makes people hate you Gilbert! It is not longer funny like it was in 7th grade to be a jerk.

Not to mention, that you made your coach look stupid.

Okay, how difficult is this to understand? He didn't think the public would get a kick out of "fake injury-gate" -- he didn't think at all. It didn't occur to him that people might get upset, he was just doing what struck him as being something good to do at the time.

Hate him if you want. Gil's a goofball, but he's a good guy.

One of things that amuses me so much about this is that Gil is too basically honest to pull off the lie. The ONLY reason we know he lied about his knee is that he told reporters. All he had to do to stay out of this trouble was maintain the lie. Tell reporters he had no idea what Young was talking about when Young mentioned Gil's sacrifice. Say that his knee will be fine and that he expects to play against Milwaukee. Then, his "sore knee" is cause for minor concern until he plays again and no one even knows he was faking.

As for him lying...it makes him very human. Everyone lies. In big ways and little; on stuff that's important and stuff that's not. Would it have been better for him to talk to the coach straight up? Sure. Just like it would have been better if I'd told my old boss I wanted a day off instead of calling in sick when I knew things would be slow. Or if I'd told my professor I'd procrastinated the paper I was supposed to hand in that day instead of implying I needed extra time because I'd been "sick."

[go'stags]

I <3 Gil. And I definitley think its possible to have a winning team, even with this type of behavior. He is by no means a team cancer, and who cares what "finnegan" thinks?

I actually hope this means Gil doesn't care what the media thinks. But I am more inclined to believe Nivek's explanation that he just acted. If this means he is going to return to that confidence level when he dropped 29 a game, then awesome.

[tricky99]

What perplexes me is that any one would "hate" Gil. What exactly has Gil done to make him worthy of hate? Gilbert is an odd duck. He will always be that way. That is his nature. What people need to do is just work with him as he is instead of trying to make him conform into some boring person he can't be.

It's funny how Gil is a villian now. Doesn't anyone remember Ron Artest and Dennis Rodman? Strange odd guys also but guess what. When people stopped acting like they were evil for being different they were able to prosper and help teams win championships. In the big scheme of things the things Gil has done are very minor but the media-circus needs somebody to be the whipping boy of the day.

I hope Wall is successful but the way the Wiz/fans/media have made him into the second coming is despicable. What happens when Wall proves to be human with feet of clay just like everyone else? Will we throw him under the bus with the same zeal that we have Gil.

The wiz have a history of tossing player's aside. In all reality Webber should have been retiring here and Jordan should not have been tossed a side as old garbage. When exactly do the wizards stick with players when the going get rough? Hopefully Ted brings a new loyality to the wiz. I want to see Gil's jersey in the rafters one day. We should all hope for that if we really have love for the wiz and Gil.

[finnegan]

Hate him if you want. Gil's a goofball, but he's a good guy.

Interesting response. I saw a documentary on a guy that weighed 950 lbs. and was hospitalized. He made the statement that being in the hospital was a good thing, but he wanted to take more of a middle of the road approach. He thought it was an extreme and an unreasonable request for the hospital to ask him to stop eating M&Ms. He talked for 20 minutes how you can't take extreme approaches, if you want to be successful in life. He died 7 days later.

Forward to today. Gilbert Arenas is coming off one of the longest suspensions in NBA history. I won't even get into how much he damaged himself by lying, and the little pistol thing with teamates to make light of the matter. 99% of the population never indirectly threatens another humans life over a gambling debt, so there is no sympathy there.

From a PR perspective, it is not unreasonable to suggest that Gilbert Arenas is similar to this 950 lb man.

Now fake injury-gate. One approach would be for Gilbert to just keep his mouth shut. But a better approach would be learning from his mistakes, and becoming a more mature and respectable person.

Hard working normal people have to abide by certain social rule. True professional athletes are thrust into the lime light at an early age, and have lack of normal experiences which help average people mature. But even when compare to other NBA players, his maturity and judgment seems quite stunted.

[DallasShalDune]

When people break social rules, they do not become evil. They just become rule-breakers.

It is arrogant to think that because of the gun situation, where I severely doubt Gil would ever shoot another man, especially a teammate, that Gil is forever damned. Now the people mad at Gil are entitled to their opinions on this lying incident with his knee, and yes, Gil does have a short leash on because of the obviously bad decision he made by bringing guns into the locker room and playing an unfunny practical joke on Javaris, but he is not forever damned and a tick on society because he made a mistake. Gilbert Arenas was punished for something he deserved to be punished for, but he also has a right to blame the media a little bit. They really do blow everything up out of proportion, and they make him look like a bad human being because more people will read about Gilbert's latest f-up rather than the fact he hit 5 threes against the Bulls and looks healthier and more productive than he has in years.

These ideals of "maturity" and "judgment" do have real world application, but to say that someone who doesn't follow social rules is somehow mentally stunted goes too far in my opinion. They seem arrogant, as if the person speaking them is a perfect picture of American idealism.

Gilbert is not evil; he is also not perfect.

But, alas, this is the Gilbert Arenas shrine, so I guess he is perfect lol

[fishercob]

Hate him if you want. Gil's a goofball, but he's a good guy.

Interesting response. I saw a documentary on a guy that weighed 950 lbs. and was hospitalized. He made the statement that being in the hospital was a good thing, but he wanted to take more of a middle of the road approach. He thought it was an extreme and an unreasonable request for the hospital to ask him to stop eating M&Ms. He talked for 20 minutes how you can't take extreme approaches, if you want to be successful in life. He died 7 days later.

Forward to today. Gilbert Arenas is coming off one of the longest suspensions in NBA history. I won't even get into how much he damaged himself by lying, and the little pistol thing with teamates to make light of the matter. 99% of the population never indirectly threatens another humans life over a gambling debt, so there is no sympathy there.

From a PR perspective, it is not unreasonable to suggest that Gilbert Arenas is similar to this 950 lb man.

Now fake injury-gate. One approach would be for Gilbert to just keep his mouth shut. But a better approach would be learning from his mistakes, and becoming a more mature and respectable person.

Hard working normal people have to abide by certain social rule. True professional athletes are thrust into the lime light at an early age, and have lack of normal experiences which help average people mature. But even when compare to other NBA players, his maturity and judgment seems quite stunted.

If you choose to not have sympathy, don't have it for Javaris Crittenton. He's the one who made the tacit threat to which you refer. Gilbert's "choose one" was an over-the-top response inviting Critt to choose which gun to shoot Gilbert with.

Point being, you don't have your facts straight. I'm not defending any of Gilbert's actions, but I find them far less nauseating than the moralizing that columnists and internet posters do about "respectable" and "hard working" people.

[doclinkin]

I love how the haters took over this shrine, I'm gonna make some runs into the other shrines and ruin them as well.

You miss the point. Love or hate, every post in here keeps the 'Gil = Good' thread bumped to the top of the page. Fine, haters will hate, fans will battle back on his behalf, the Shrine benefits. Keep talking. Where I am, if you like Gil in part you like him for his random oddities, the fact that he is no deadpan Tim Duncan character, nor even an arrogant marketing machine like Prime Jordan. No 'both teams played hard' garbage, he's gonna say whatever he's thinking in the moment. Comedian Mike Birbiglia says he hates the fact that he (Birbigs) tends to have no 'on-deck circle' for his thoughts, someone shouts 'batter up' and he's like 'Me? I'm not even ready', and they just come out swinging crazy at any old pitch.

(The rest of the joke: he just moved into a building and a woman held the door open. She said: 'I know you're not a rapist or criminal since a rapist wouldn't have a futon like that.' Mike: Now what I SHOULD have said..... was: nothing. But what I DID say was: 'you'd be surprised...')

That's Gilbert. What I should have said: was nothing...

Instead he said something far more interesting and revealing and gave people something else to talk about. Not as a carefully crafted marketing statement-- since, if he was listening to the advice of a publicist etc he wouldn't have gone on twitter and suicided his public image by clowning on Pete Vescey with off-color language and irreverent japes-- but by wildly swinging at low fat softballs lobbed at him.

He's tried to be surly, tried to imitate stoic uninteresting stolid boring jocks. But if you want to know what he thinks, generally he's gonna tell you what he's thinking in the moment. It's like having telepathy, you want to read his mind, ask him what he thinks. He has an inner monologue, but sometimes it's like a Shakespearean soliloquy, subtext spoken aloud, the sorts of things you think, but don't really tell everybody. Like keloid scars on your junk when you used a dull razor to try to shave (from his blog). Funny.

Media knows this, loves it, follows him around like remoras to a shark. He's bound to make your job easier by giving you something to talk about. Radio puppets are the worst of the bunch since they have hours to fill with jibberjabber, and feel the imperative to come up with passionate 'takes' on a topic even if in all honestly quite frankly they don't give a steaming lump about the particular sport in general, only talk about it or watch because they're paid to.

Nobody is quoting Tim Duncan, though he's a clever, sardonic, witty guy. He's also too guarded and careful and knows clearly the media is not his best friend. Gilbert ain't Timmy, but so the hell what, he's just a dude playing basketball. Doing the best he can. And in this case, like many of Gil's deals, the heart of it isn't in doubt, just the angle it took was offkilter: Nick Young needs minutes to get in a groove and feel confident. Flip was running heavy minutes for his three guard line; Gil saw a talented young player needed some run or might lose his way again. And stepped up. Stepped aside.

Onto a media minefield. No his knee is fine. He just wanted to give Nick a chance to show what he could do, get confidence. Um, yeah, he probably should have told his coach. A team captain might have taken that role: Um: coach, you're playing heavy minutes of your veteran players at a time when the youngsters are starved to show that they belong. Why don't you loosen up the reins and let the kids get in the game a bit. Work that 'developmental' angle some. But for whatever reason, he took it into his own hands rather than approach his coach.

Nick went off though. Gil's read of that situation looked right...

[Nivek]

Hate him if you want. Gil's a goofball, but he's a good guy.

Interesting response. I saw a documentary on a guy that weighed 950 lbs. and was hospitalized. He made the statement that being in the hospital was a good thing, but he wanted to take more of a middle of the road approach. He thought it was an extreme and an unreasonable request for the hospital to ask him to stop eating M&Ms. He talked for 20 minutes how you can't take extreme approaches, if you want to be successful in life. He died 7 days later.

Was it the M&Ms?

Forward to today. Gilbert Arenas is coming off one of the longest suspensions in NBA history. I won't even get into how much he damaged himself by lying, and the little pistol thing with teamates to make light of the matter. 99% of the population never indirectly threatens another humans life over a gambling debt, so there is no sympathy there.

Nah, we just threaten each other over stuff like lines on maps, property, hurt feelings, etc. Gil wasn't threatening anyone, he was kidding around. Was it stupid? You bet. But it was a joke, not a threat.

From a PR perspective, it is not unreasonable to suggest that Gilbert Arenas is similar to this 950 lb man.

Now fake injury-gate. One approach would be for Gilbert to just keep his mouth shut. But a better approach would be learning from his mistakes, and becoming a more mature and respectable person.

Hard working normal people have to abide by certain social rule. True professional athletes are thrust into the lime light at an early age, and have lack of normal experiences which help average people mature. But even when compare to other NBA players, his maturity and judgment seems quite stunted.

When I say he's a "good guy" I say that for a few reasons. One of them being personal interaction. When I wrote about the team, I worked with Gil regularly. He was always great in ways that few PEOPLE (not restricting the comment to NBA players) are. Not just in terms of a willingness to talk, but I'm referring to a willingness to actually listen, to engage in a conversation, to interact with the ideas being discussed.

Gil is also stunningly generous. Many Wizards fans are familiar with the story of the boy whose entire family was killed in a fire. Gil heard the story on the news and quasi-adopted the youngster. He didn't just bring him to Wizards games and arrange for him to be a ballboy. He also has been financially supporting the young man and his grandmother, who is raising him.

When Katrina victims were being housed at the DC Armory, Gil saw it on the news, went to Costco about bought something like $70k worth of stuff, which he had delivered to those people. And he does stuff like that with enough frequency (and so little publicity) that he's not doing it for PR.

Gil is (well, at least used to be) an athlete who understood and appreciated how good it is to be an NBA player. He used to be a daily celebration of being in the NBA. I don't think that changed for him, even when he got hurt. What changed was the perception of him. The goofballness wasn't as fun when he wasn't on the court scoring 30 points a night. At least for some.

I think the "isn't it great to be in the NBA" aspect of him is diminished because of the guns incident. Honestly, I'd love to see him get it back, because he was FUN (at least to me).

Gil's a basketball player. He was exactly this much of a goofball when he was one of the game's best offensive weapons and he was leading the team into the 2nd round of the playoffs. We fans tend to take this stuff very seriously, but it's not that deep. It's not surgery or flying an airplane or even driving a bus. Lots of people are interested in what he does, but he doesn't have a direct affect on our lives. If Gil flips his lid and goes full screwball, the only person he's really hurting is himself.

IF Gil cares at all about public relations at this point, he should shut up and let his play do the talking. I don't think PR concerns him, though.

Plus, I read Flip's quote yesterday describing Gil as the most coachable player on the team. Maybe Flip actually knows what he's talking about.

[nate33]

When I say he's a "good guy" I say that for a few reasons. One of them being personal interaction. When I wrote about the team, I worked with Gil regularly. He was always great in ways that few PEOPLE (not restricting the comment to NBA players) are. Not just in terms of a willingness to talk, but I'm referring to a willingness to actually listen, to engage in a conversation, to interact with the ideas being discussed.

Gil is also stunningly generous. Many Wizards fans are familiar with the story of the boy whose entire family was killed in a fire. Gil heard the story on the news and quasi-adopted the youngster. He didn't just bring him to Wizards games and arrange for him to be a ballboy. He also has been financially supporting the young man and his grandmother, who is raising him.

When Katrina victims were being housed at the DC Armory, Gil saw it on the news, went to Costco about bought something like $70k worth of stuff, which he had delivered to those people. And he does stuff like that with enough frequency (and so little publicity) that he's not doing it for PR.

Gil is (well, at least used to be) an athlete who understood and appreciated how good it is to be an NBA player. He used to be a daily celebration of being in the NBA. I don't think that changed for him, even when he got hurt. What changed was the perception of him. The goofballness wasn't as fun when he wasn't on the court scoring 30 points a night. At least for some.

I think the "isn't it great to be in the NBA" aspect of him is diminished because of the guns incident. Honestly, I'd love to see him get it back, because he was FUN (at least to me).

Gil's a basketball player. He was exactly this much of a goofball when he was one of the game's best offensive weapons and he was leading the team into the 2nd round of the playoffs. We fans tend to take this stuff very seriously, but it's not that deep. It's not surgery or flying an airplane or even driving a bus. Lots of people are interested in what he does, but he doesn't have a direct affect on our lives. If Gil flips his lid and goes full screwball, the only person he's really hurting is himself.

IF Gil cares at all about public relations at this point, he should shut up and let his play do the talking. I don't think PR concerns him, though.

Plus, I read Flip's quote yesterday describing Gil as the most coachable player on the team. Maybe Flip actually knows what he's talking about.

Wizkev has only been back for a week and he has already penned a HOF post!

[fishercob]

The last two posts are why I come to this board. Thanks doc n' kev.

[Ruzious]

Kev's post was great.

[DallasShalDune]

The last two posts are why I come to this board. Thanks doc n' kev.

+1

They both voiced what I wanted to say--they just said it a lot better!

[Scabs304]

I love how the haters took over this shrine, I'm gonna make some runs into the other shrines and ruin them as well.

krizko that you came to the Laron Profit thread thinking it was a shrine just glaring shows your ignorance.

I've been all for this thread just be very careful on your little rebellions youngin

[20MexicanosIn1Van]

Gilbert rockin' the foamposites .

Hope he signs with Nike instead of Under Armor and wears those during the season!

[Ji]

bad news on GIL

out the first 2 games and maybe more. Do we still have the same medical staff? WTF is going on. I dont think he faked the injury 2 weeks ago...i think he had it all along and when he said he faked it..he really wasnt...he just didnt want people to know he was hurt