From what I’ve gathered, Arenas, Crittenton and some teammates were indeed playing a card game on the flight back from Phoenix, and both Crittenton and Arenas were coming up on the losing end, but Arenas didn’t owe $25,000, and the amount wasn’t owed to Crittenton, but to JaVale McGee. Arenas bailed on the game unhappy with the rules, and Crittenton was left to pay the pot, much to his displeasure, so he was trying earnestly to get Arenas to pay his part. Tempers flared during this dispute and I’m told Crittenton wanted to fight Arenas for backing out of paying up. Arenas, meanwhile, said he would burn Crittenton’s car, and Crittenton said he would shoot Arenas in his bad left knee.
via Mike Jones Sports: Startling picture starting to become more clear.
First, stop what you’re doing and go bookmark/RSS subscribe to Jones’ blog while we wait the approximate two and a half weeks until he’s hired by someone.
Jones goes into detail on this disaster going on in Washington, and lays out what really happened, which essentially comes down to Gil wanting us to say the following:
“Oh, haha, silly ol’ Gil. He was just playing around! It was a joke! Just got a little out of hand. That Zero. Haha. I tell you. He’s a CAD!”
Um, Gil? You pulled out three guns. THREE GUNS. In a locker room. A place with emotion and energy and movement and oh, yeah, tons and tons of people in the area!
I get that players feel like there is a present threat due to their money and lifestyle. I get that. And I’m sympathetic to it. But keep it in your truck. Keep it with a friend, whose only job is to wait in the parking lot with your arsenal until the game is over. Keep it at home and transport it later. Don’t bring it into the damn locker room, and if you do, don’t pull it out when you’re in an argument! I don’t care if you didn’t point it at him!
This is not an athlete-media issue. I’ve got friends in that building to cover that game. That means there’s a possibility, no matter how remote, that one of them could have been injured. What if you dropped it? What if they got knocked over when DeShawn Stevenson tried to hand someone a basketball and inevitably missed by thirty feet? What if, what if, what if?
I’m starting to get a whole Plaxico Burress feel from this event. I thought Burress would get slapped on the wrist, no biggie, return to normal. Then it didn’t work out that way. And I get that it’s DC vs. NY, but you’re hearing more talk of him being in trouble, not less.
For a guy who defined fun-loving NBA identity for a lot of us, this story becomes more and more depressing by the moment.
In closing, Mike Jones is awesome.
