Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

AD was probably telling me about some prank he pulled on Nick and Dominic. Ned Dishman/NBAE/Getty Images

Right now I’m just trying to lose the weight and try to get in shape. We have a machine called the “Ultra G” and I can run two or three miles on it a day and only put 30 percent of my body weight on my knees. I walk with 50 percent and run with 30 percent. I can run two miles and not feel anything. I’m also doing shooting competitions, I can spot shoot. I’m not really supposed to run or jog or do anything like that full impact until Wednesday. That will be 10 weeks. Right now I’m just strengthening up the muscle because I don’t want to do what I did last time when the muscle was not strong enough.

Etan is Back
It’s always a motivational story for me as he makes his comeback. It’s an inspiration. Here’s a guy going through open-heart surgery and a couple months later he’s back and trying to get out there with the team. That’s an inspiration for anybody. Some people go through things in life and they don’t let anything hold them back. Anybody could have called it quits after this, he’s back and he’s ready to play. The team is holding him down from playing so soon, if it was up to him, he would have already played.

It’s hard to tell if he’s changed from this experience. Right now, he’s just trying to work hard to get back playing again.

"Oily" Beat Me in a Shooting Contest
I had to keep his confidence up. You know I don’t get beat … What had happened was … the ball was slippery and stuff … Now I owe him dinner. He beat me fair and square. It was after practice, he was all warmed up and I was just getting down there and he beat me for lunch. Actually, I didn’t understand what he was saying. I don’t know if he said lunch or dinner. I just heard “Fo Go Chow!” I guess he was saying, “Fogo de Chão.”

Got a New Video Game
So I have been trying out this new game called Rock Band. I need to get some of the other guys on the team to play it because I can’t decide to play the drums, guitar or sing on the microphone when I play. I think I can use the mic to practice my standup routines though.

The Mya Rumor
It is not true. I’m off the market and the Mya rumor is false. I know her through a mutual friend, The Game, because she opened up for him on his tour. No, I am not dating Mya. That’s a false rumor. That’s where it started from because that’s the only time I’ve ever seen her. I mean, I was at the same party as her three years ago, but I don’t actually know her like that.

Caron and Antawn for All-Star Reserves!
They’re very deserving of being All-Stars. They beat the expectations of what people thought was going to happen with the team. Everyone thought the team was going to fold and go under and those two All-Stars kept this team in the boat moving.

The surprise in the West was A.I., but A.I.’s fans are strong fans. When A.I. was here in the East, he won in votes too. Hopefully T-Mac makes it as a reserve. That’s how All-Star goes. It’s a tricky thing.

Here’s who I’d take to fill out the All-Star rosters:

EAST RESERVES
F - Antawn
F - Caron
C - Chris Bosh or Ilgauskas
G - Joe Johnson
G - Chauncey Billups or Rip Hamilton
WC - Richard Jefferson
WC - Paul Pierce

WEST RESERVES
F - Dirk Nowitzki
F - Carlos Boozer
C - Amare Stoudemire
G - T-Mac
G - Steve Nash
WC - Chris Paul
WC - Brandon Roy (you’re averaging 20 and five, is that really an All-Star? I know your team is winning, but, come on), Marcus Camby (great defense), Baron Davis (that’s going to be hard with all those guards).

Those are the frontrunners.

Reading Assignment
Have you seen the new book that came out, God Save the Fan? Will Leitch came out with the book. Thank you Will Leitch! Got to give a shout out to Will Leitch and Deadspin for coming out with the book God Save the Fan. I’m just going to tell you guys to go get the book, because I’m in Chapter 2. I mean, the title might be a little hard for some of you to read, especially since me and LeBron James are best friends. It’s about me and LeBron and it’s somewhere along the lines of “Why Gilbert is Better for the Game than LeBron” … it’s somewhere along those lines. I don’t want Cleveland fans to get mad at me, I didn’t write the book, I just read it. It’s kind of funny because me and him have been best friends over the five years since he’s been in this league. I was just grateful being mentioned with him. When I’m done playing and after all is said and done and he’s compared in Jordan likeness, I’m going to show my kids the book and be like, “Look at this here. Y’all see this, kids? Told you I was somebody. Y’all thought I was playing.” LeBron and I are really friends though, the whole free throw thing in the playoffs was just trash talking.

Preseason Basketball Outdoors?
It would be nice to play an outdoor preseason game, but in Phoenix? Do you know how hot it is? They better have the ambulance ready, because somebody ain’t gonna make it in that heat. Truthfully, I don’t want to play in no damn heat. If they picked another city besides Phoenix … Do you understand how hot it is in Phoenix, ladies and gentlemen? It is 197 degrees outside in Phoenix. It is so hot outside in Phoenix that they play in the coldest arena in the league. No one wants to play in that arena because they do not have a heating system and they only put their cooling system on. I know it’s going to be nighttime when they play, but, whoo! It’ll still be at least 114 at night.

Reminds me of U of A
I lived in Tucson and I didn’t go outside without my shirt off unless it was 9 o’clock at night. Me and my teachers at the University of Arizona were having a problem with communication. I had some classes that were at 11 a.m. or 2 o’clock, and I was like, “I’m just going to have to reschedule to classes that start at 9 or 10 p.m.” The sun was killing me during the day. I lost 15 pounds from high school to the fall of my freshman year because of the heat. I caught a body cramp my first two days there. I was so dehydrated that my body cramped up and Jason Gardner had to take me to the doctor to get refueled. We didn’t tell Coach O that. I didn’t want him to know I was a punk. It was after one of those long practices and we were just sitting there playing video games and I got the yellow skin and the whole body cramp – neck, eyelids, toes, fingers … They had to put a fluid bag in me and had me drink a lot of water.

The D.C. Sports Bog Profiled My Rebounder
That’s my man right there, Garrett is cool. We met on MySpace and he was like, “If you ever have a time where you need somebody to rebound for you, I’ll rebound for you.” I guess it was a different approach than just saying “I want to meet you,” so I was like “All right, I’ll be at the gym at such and such a time, come then.” But, I guess I forgot to tell the security people downstairs that I was having somebody come, so we missed each other the first day. The second day, we hooked up and he came down there and he rebounded for me, then we played video games and I signed autographs and gave him a pair of the Gil Zeros, the road version that never came out because we didn’t wear black shoes. So he put it up on his MySpace, bragging to all of his friends. Then, a couple days later he asked me if he could be a ballkid so I came in and asked Jerry Walter if they were looking for a new ballkid and he was like, “Yeah, we’d love to have a new one.” So I had them meet and he became one of the ballkids and he was here all the time rebounding for me during the summer.

One day during the summer and I was making him come at 8 a.m. or 11 p.m. If I said, “Hey, I need somebody to rebound,” he was on call and would come whenever. So he was here and rebounding one day when the USA Basketball junior national team was here. They needed some players to play and it was actually one of the first times I played fullcourt after my injury. Garrett said he was going to Villanova and the USA coach, Jay Wright, was from Villanova so I asked him if there was anyway he could hook Garrett up to see if he could get a job working with Nova as a ballkid or whatever position they had open and the coach said, “Yeah.” So we’ll see if he uses any of this publicity to get any girls.

Locker Room Shuffling
I didn’t understand that because they put both the rookies back together. They just switched sides of the room. I guess they figured if they put them next to Caron and Antawn that they’d be more serious … NOT! They’re just messing up the other side of the room now. I came in one day and there was just ice everywhere. I was like, “What’s going on here?”

“Yeah man, Nick ran by your locker.”

“So you decided to wait until he got by my locker to throw it at him? All of these lockers in this locker room and you decided to wait until he got by my locker to throw the ice bucket at him.”

Nick Young Should Be in the Rookie Challenge …
When it’s all said and done, in four years Nick will be a top two player in his draft class. This kid can score so easy. He makes it look so easy. I told you before, I argue with my dad about it. I say if you have to pick another two-guard that reminds you of him, I say he has the ability skills to be a Kobe. Not the mindset, he doesn’t have the killer instinct. But, skill-wise, when it comes down to moving with the ball … whoo! If you would have seen that play in Cleveland where he was going one way, shook up Gibson and then dunked on LeBron … his natural ability is really, really good. His raw talent is very polished. He is one of those young emotional players though. His play depends on his emotions. Like, if he’s feeling good today, he might have a good game. If he’s feeling bad because he missed a couple shots, he’s going to have a bad game. Once he gets past all that … that’s why I say, give him four years, he’ll be top two in his class.

He’ll definitely be the best guard in his class. If you understand what I’m talking about, his basketball skill level is that high. What Kobe does out there? He can do everything that Kobe does. A young Kobe. The way he moves, the way he posts up, the way he fades away, the way he slashes through the lane, his instincts when he gets hit … he just has everything to be great. He has the tools to be great. He doesn’t lack anything. The only thing he probably lacks is speed, but Kobe and Jordan didn’t have no damn super speed. But the checklist is checked off: first step, step-back, 1-2 pull-up, finishes well, jumps off one, jumps off two … you can’t find anyone more complete.

… And the Dunk Contest
You know what’s funny? You know that dunk that J.R. Smith did in the dunk contest in Denver? When he wrapped the ball behind his back? Nick did that dunk in college. You see the abilities he got. He can jump. They didn’t give it to him this year, he’ll just have to fight for it next year.

Who else is in this dunk contest? Moon? What kind of dunk contest are they trying to have? He’s good at dunking, but he ain’t no acrobatic dunker. He might be a high-jump dunker, but do you remember Eddie Robinson who played for Chicago? He was a high-flyer but all you saw from him was the one-hand dunk. Some people can jump high, some people are more acrobatic and know how to use their body.

Dwight Howard is in it again? Howard’s not going to get the recognition because for somebody like me, I’m like, “Man, you’re supposed to do that.” Same thing with Shawn Kemp back in the day. I was like, “You’re supposed to do that, Shawn.” You’re not used to seeing a big man dunk like that, but you’re not impressed. If you see him hit his head on the rim from dunking, you’re like, “Uhh, come on, you’re four inches away from the rim when you’re just standing.” But then you see a 6-6 guard go up there and hit his head on the rim and you’re like, “Oh, wow! 50!” That’s why guards win the majority of the time, because what they do looks harder. The average person is like 5-9, 5-10, so if you see a 6-2, 6-3 guard doing all these dunks you’re going to root for him.

I want to see a dunk contest where they put James White in it. They should just go ahead and put him in there. Why wouldn’t you want to see a kid jump from the free throw line, between his legs. I mean, come on. If he shows up at the dunk contest, it would be exciting again. He can do things that no one can do. He has the strongest one leg anybody’s ever seen. How are you going to dunk from the free throw line between your legs? Come on people, Jordan and Dr. J jumped from the free throw line and dunked one hand. This kid is jumping from the free throw line and throwing it between his legs.

Rudy Gay should be interesting though, he’s mid-sized. He should have something in the tank. But him over Gerald Green? Doubt it. I take Gerald. Dunk contests aren’t about how high you get, it’s about how you move and how you make that dunk look. That’s why Jordan won. I don’t think he jumped higher than Dominique Wilkins, he just made it look pretty.

I Can Bowl, Too
Damn right, I’m in the running for best celebrity bowler. There has to be a contest, they just can’t give the award to anybody. I got a few personalized balls. Are these real nominees or did they just every celebrity whoever said they bowled? I don’t think any of the other names on that list can beat me. If we went to the lanes right now I’d score anywhere from 220 to 240. I have three balls actually. The other two are Agent Zip and The People’s Champ, it’s clear with a boxing glove in the middle. Ken Griffey Jr. might have a lane in his house, but I have a pool table in my house and that doesn’t mean I’m good at pool. I’ve bowled ever since I was little. We weren’t old enough to go to the clubs so we’d always go to the bowling alley or the World on Wheels skating rink. My high is 277. I’m back bowling again, I go with my teammates. DeShawn is getting good now. We bowled all last year and he was terrible at first, he’s decent now. Brendan’s not good, AD is pretty good. My best friends in L.A., they bowl 300. When you’re competing against them, you know, you see what good bowlers are. The day I bowled a 277, my friend bowled a 300. I play with my friend Ryan Nelson, he’s a manager/owner of P.F. Chang’s and we play $1 a pin and he gets his butt whooped.

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

Caron has us swimming. Mitchell Layton/NBAE/Getty Images

You know who my team reminded me of last night? They reminded me of the 2004-05 Wizards team when it was me, Larry, Antawn and we had Juan Dixon, Brendan Haywood, Kwame Brown … that feisty team. No matter if we were down 15 or even 20 with six minutes left, the crowd somehow knew we were going to win that game because we scored so easy. Last night they showed the same type of fight.

Caron took the challenge, man. He took the challenge. He had that memory of Paul Pierce which was the fire and extra motivation he needed. You can see how he used it yesterday. I guess Paul Pierce was quoted in the paper last year after Caron made the All-Star game and he said, “Caron Butler should send me flowers for being injured so he could make the All-Star game, because if I was healthy, he wouldn’t be in there.”

Caron took that personal and … BOOM … a year later he got his revenge double time, back-to-back. You saw what he did at the end.

They say one shot always defines a player, it’s usually in the playoffs. But last night might as well have been a playoff game. I think what Caron did last night defined him as a player and I guarantee you’re going to see a different player elevate from here.

Mine was the 2005 shot against the Bulls, and my career went up. Right now, you’re going to see his career elevate.

I texted him at the end of the game, “I’ve never seen you play like that.”

This whole time I’ve been out, I’ve never seen him want to take over a game. Last night he showed it. He put the boys on his back. Him and Paul Pierce were playing great defense on each other, battling back and forth all night. He just said, “Hey, we’re going to win this game in Boston tonight.” You saw the heart and the fire. I told him that’s that mindset you need every night, even when I’m playing. That will be two guys with the same mindset going out there doing it. That’s hard to stop.

Man, UCANN did it. I went over the game again today, and that man played his butt off. Caron Butler ain’t getting credit for what he’s doing. He’s never gotten credit for what he’s done for us. He’s been in the shadows a little bit of me and Antawn, but it’s the Big Three. There’s no order of priority. He’s just as important as the two of us are to the organization and he’s showing it right now how smart of a move it was bringing him aboard for Kwame Brown. He’s given us more than we expected from him, a lot more.

If you list the top three-men in the league, for me, it goes:

1. LeBron
2. Carmelo
3. Caron
4. RJ
5. Paul Pierce

The only reason I’m going Paul Pierce fifth is because he’s getting older and he’s not as potent now that he has the other two players. Caron is on the rise.

We don’t call him ‘Tough Juice.’ That’s something that Coach called him because he saw the toughness every day. He brought the toughness that we didn’t have in that position for a long time.

He goes out and fights every night and that’s what you need. When you have him at the three and Antawn at the four who’s one of the top five players in the league in double-doubles, people don’t pay attention him either like they should. He’s second in the Eastern Conference in double-doubles, behind Dwight Howard. (That means he’s in front of KG.) And he’s one of five players averaging 20 and 10.

When you have two players like that at your three and your four, when you walk into an arena, no wonder you can play with confidence. You can make predictions like, “Yeah, we’re going to beat them,” because you see what you have. OK, I was ahead of myself on Game 1 vs. the Celtics, but at the end of the day, my teammates believed what I believed and they went out and won back-to-back games against that team.

As the leader of a team, that’s all you hope for. Your warriors are ready to fight. When I step on the court with my team, they know, “Hey, he don’t care about that other group. He don’t care. So why should we? He went out and made a prediction. So we should go out there and believe in what he says.”

And they did it. They were like, “The last time we was here, G.A. said we could beat them. We can beat them. Hey, if we don’t beat them, we don’t. But, if we do, hey we beat them.”

And yesterday they were celebrating like they won a championship, and I was celebrating with them … from the house. I was texting them all. Throw the champagne! Throw the water! Throw the bucket! Throw … something!

I heard DeShawn got the Gatorade bucket dumped on him. I know some people will say, “It’s just a win.” No, it’s not “just a win.” That’s not, “just a win.” I’ve never won a championship, and the only person on the team to ever win a championship is Antonio Daniels, but, I guarantee that’s how it felt yesterday. You beat a team that’s highly regarded as a championship team, you beat them back-to-back with the second game in their building, you play great basketball, you couldn’t ask for nothing more.

That was the best feeling from an early in-season game that you could ever possibly feel. There’s not too many games during the regular season that you can get hyped for. Last year, for me, it was the Laker game, the Phoenix game and it was the Dallas game when they came to D.C.

The feeling I got last night I got watching the game … my heart was just skipping. And I don’t get nervous about basketball games, but yesterday I was nervous because we called a timeout after they scored and I’m texting Drew Cleary, the strength coach behind the bench. I’m like, “Tell Caron, don’t settle for a jump shot. Attack ‘em. Attack ‘em. They don’t want to take charges, they’re shot blockers. If you can get into them and get to that free throw line …” But I know he didn’t get the message because when I looked on TV I saw everybody standing up behind the bench celebrating. But Caron went to the basket anyway like he read my mind. He went to the basket and got that and-one.

I love Caron for that. He shut up a lot of critics out there for us. He shut them down, got their mouths closed.

After I paged Caron and told him I saw a new level in him last night, he paged me and was like, “We’re playing great basketball and when you get back, we’re going to be playing excellent basketball. They say we can’t go to the championship? Ha!”

For the last three years when we’re going into the playoffs, I’ve told them, “No team wants to see us healthy in the playoffs.” We haven’t been healthy for a while in the playoffs. When we played Cleveland, those were some great, exciting games. LeBron made three good shots to win them games, but, other than that it was a great playoff series. That’s all you can ask for in the playoffs, your players play hard and you make it exciting. This year we have a hungry team that’s ready to get back to that level again.

Go Caron!

Our Time of the Season

This is the time last year when we were making a lot of noise, in December and January. November is not our month. For the last five years I’ve been here, November’s not been our month. But, if you look at our records in December and January, that’s when we always make that push. That’s where we always make the noise. Every year I’ve been here it’s worked the same way.

Last year we looked terrible in November. We went on a 0-8 start on the road. Then a month and a half later, we were the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conference.

I’m proud. Even though I’m not playing, it’s still my team. You know? They’re holding the ship up. I heard people say they’re treading water. They’re not treading water dammit, they’re swimming. They’re relaxing in the pool, they’re not treading water.

I think everyone forgets the Wizards in a quick breath. Last year we were No. 1 in the Eastern Conference going into the All-Star break, and then after the All-Star break, everyone forgets about us. This year, I got hurt and you still have the same team and you’re adding Caron because Caron missed the last part of the season, you’re adding him to the mix and you have two All-Stars instead of one. And look at them, 7-3 over their last 10 games, three wins in a row and two of those wins against the Celtics.

We’re fourth in the East. I said it after my first year when we went to the playoffs: We’re going to be in fourth until somebody takes fourth away from us, or unless we can move up. We’re not dropping any further than fourth or fifth. We might go up, but we’re not going to go back down, and we haven’t since.

We were the highest scoring trio, that’s why we considered ourselves the best trio in the league. Now you add what they did, plus what I did, and that’s why we were the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conference at one point.

We started off at the beginning of the season slow, and once you start off slow, everybody wants to bury you. It’s OK, that’s why you have players like me to make you realize, “Hey, we’re still on earth. Don’t shift too fast.”

Clearing Up My Return Date

I plan on coming back. I’m going to be working out with the team. I’m going to be going full blast after All-Star. Right now I can shoot jump shots. They don’t want me to run yet just in case, but I’m shooting jump shots and trying to get my legs strong and just get all the muscles back before I go out there and try to play. I mean technically, to be technically speaking, I can actually go out there and play after All-Star, but who knows what would happen … maybe Friday Night Lights with Boobie Miles? “Let me spin, coach! Let me spin!”

Right now I’m in Phase 2 – getting my leg strong. There are three phases and I’m in the middle of Phase 2. So, after All-Star break, I’ll be ready. I’ll be practicing and playing with the team, but, if I don’t feel that my confidence mentally and strength wise that I’m ready to come back, then I’m just going to keep holding off. I’ll just be a practice dummy.

Clearing Up My Contract

I want to get a six-year deal. I want to be a max player. If my team decides that they don’t want me here any more and they’re going to go in a different direction, then I got to look elsewhere. For me to look elsewhere, I want to go find a championship team who’s a championship contender. I’m going to have to take less money, but I’m willing to do that to win a ring. If my team doesn’t want me, then I’m going to another team and I’m going to take less money to go there.

Keeping Up With the New Years Resolution

I’ve had three bad days so far. I’m pretty good. They were actually only half a day bad days, but they were at the end of the night. Since it’s at the end of the night, that means you went to sleep a little angry and a little upset, so that goes into the book as angry. If you want to be upset, be upset during the day and you can make up for it at night. So I’m 12 for 15 in happy days. Today is a good day … so far.

Scouting Pierce

I watched the Hardwood Classics from 2002 and it was the 2002 series between the Nets and the Celtics. I was telling Coach Jordan that the way they played Paul Pierce was that Jason Kidd didn’t stick Kenny Anderson. Kidd just roamed. Then, anytime Paul Pierce went anywhere, Jason Kidd was there to guard him. He wasn’t sticking him, he was just a middle man so Pierce couldn’t get to the basket.

That’s sort of what the Wizards did in our first game vs. Boston. I don’t think Paul Pierce scored in the fourth quarter. If he did, it was real late like with a minute left. I know Garnett had one point in the fourth, Ray Allen didn’t score … it’s hard to shut down the Big Three like that, especially in the fourth quarter.

More on the Celtics

Know what I realized the last two games? This isn’t a knock against the Celtics, but it’s the reason they’re the second or third best team in the NBA and not first: they’re young.

After the three big people, they’re just a bunch of young players. That’s why I picked San Antonio before them, because the Spurs have a veteran group that won’t seize up.

Last night and the night before, their three big players couldn’t get a shot at the end of the game and no one else stepped up for them. That’s two nights straight where their Big Three couldn’t get it done in the fourth quarter.

Rondo is young, but he’s just a floor manager. Perkins is young, but he’s just going to get all the leftovers and just do his job. They need to make sure the players they’re relying on get the ball. Rondo is the only one who can create outside of the Big Three. Posey has changed his game up to fit the stars, like he did in Miami with Shaq.

If their Big Three is having a bad night, just like our Big Three when we’re having a bad night, you’re going to beat them and you’re going to beat us.

Our Big Three never had back-to-back bad nights though … not all three of us … haha, just kidding.

Sponsoring a Video Game Tournament

Everyone knows that I’m in to video games and I sponsor Final Boss, my Halo team. Actually, I saw Chris Bosh’s funny commercial … I mean, it set black people back a hundred years, but, it was funny as hell to me still. It was funny, I’m not going to lie. But anyway, it gave me an idea. I have a group of guys, this community, that doesn’t watch basketball and doesn’t play basketball and doesn’t really care about basketball, but they like video games and know me from that.

MLG was having an online tournament and these 14- and 15-year old kids usually had to scrounge for money to get the money to enter the tournament. They don’t have a ton of loot. If their XBOX breaks, they’re putting it in the freezer to fix it. You know, the old school, “My batteries ran out, let’s put them in the freezer to charge them back up,” move. They do that. So, I decided to pay the entry fee for anybody who enters, plus I added to the prize money. Instead of $50,000 prize money, it’s $100,000 prize money to the winner. So any kid who wants to play the tournament, all you have to do is go to MLGPRO.com and sign up. The only thing you have to do for me is go to NBA.com and vote for me for All-Star.

All-Star Thoughts

All-Star voting ends in a couple days, on January 20th. I don’t see myself catching J-Kidd. My chances of being in New Orleans are pretty much over, but at the end of the day, I’m going to still be working out because that’s my comeback time.

As long as we have somebody from the Wizards there, that’s all that matters to me. It would be great if we had both players, Caron and Antawn, that would be two players from our team each year.

We got two Wizards All-Stars again. Caron Butler is an All-Star definitely and Antawn Jamison is an All-Star definitely. If you coaches can’t see this, you should be fired.

Don’t make the mistake you made last time with me when I was averaging 29 points per game, don’t make that mistake again. We don’t need the collaboration that was going on last time when Larry Brown was here and trying to put all 17 Pistons players in to the All-Star game. We don’t want to see that no more. We have All-Star players in this league and you want All-Star players and not an All-Star team, and Caron and Antawn are All-Stars this year. Hands down. One is one of five players averaging 20 and 10 and the other is just a killer on the court right now. Y’all will see Antawn and y’all will see Caron at the 2008 All-Star in New Orleans.

Agent Zero Jerseys

I’m 7th in jersey sales. You know how they sing that song, “We’re moving on up”? Well, I’m moving on down. I was 8th last year and I didn’t even play 10 games this year.

Gazo the Pranksta Update

I listen to some of these auditions and somebody starts off in their character voice and then goes back to their regular voice and I’ll be like, “I like his regular voice. His regular voice sounds funnier.”

We’re listening to them very carefully. Voices change over the years and we’re trying to find some that are signature youths.

I have the pool down to four definites, four part times, and 12 voices that could do guest appearances. So we took thousands of auditions and narrowed it down to 20 voices.

Go Georgetown

I want to give it up for Georgetown and Roy Hibbert. At first I was wondering why the hell he came back to college, but, hey, he’s showing us he can make 3-pointers now. Game-winning 3-pointers at that … that was lovely right there. I don’t follow the D.C. college hoops scene really, unless it’s a big game. I knew the Georgetown game was a big game coming in so we were in the arena watching it. When we have Caron talking about his damn Connecticut all day, you want to see them lose. DeShawn and Caron were at the game and I was at the gym early before the Boston game getting my treatment.

We Created a Nick Young Highlight Tape

Players forget. They forget what they can do. They start doubting their skill level and once you show them what they do and how they do it and how they make it look so easy, they go out there and they just perform. Their mind is just like, “I can do it!” I told Coach, I was like, “Coach, Nick watched this video today, so he’s good for today.” And Coach put him and I was like, “Don’t worry Coach, that’s a bucket, good substitution.”

The Man Who Made Me Give Up Dunks for Threes

It was in my development stage of high school when I came across Dave Hopla. I started late and it was around the time when dunking was the new thing. If you can dunk at an early age, that’s the best. Every kid is trying to dunk. So I want to camp and Coach Hopla came out there and usually when you see shooters at these camps, you’re waiting to jump on them and be like, “You missed! You missed!” but he was like, “I’m going to play this game that’s called ‘Shooting Against Reggie.’” You know, because everybody at the time thought that Reggie Miller was the best shooter in the league. So he put a hat on that had a hand cut out hanging from the brim so it was right in his face. He said, “Every one I make counts for one for me; every one I miss is three points for Reggie. We’re going to 21.”

He made 21 in a row.

I was like, “What?!”

So, I went home, got the hat, tape the hand cut out on it, and I was shooting against Reggie. It was 21-0, all right … 21-0 and Reggie won.

So I went back to camp the next day and I was talking to him like, “Man, I don’t care about dunking anymore. I want to be able to shoot like that, I want to be a shooter! That’s great!”

I figured if I could shoot like that people were going to play up on me and I could go by them and dunk.

So, for all the kids that are trying to go out there and shoot, get the hat and carve out your hand print and tape it to the front of your hat. Now you have a hand in your face when you practice. Play against the hand in your face. It helped me become a shooter. I can see the results now.

Coach Hopla and I talk about the old times, but we’re trying to build some new memories now. I’ve been hurt and haven’t been able to shoot as much with him as I’d love to, but we still reminisce about the old days we used to have.

Give the Wizards Credit, With or Without Me

Over the years this team right here has played plenty of teams that we have no chance of winning against and we pulled out the victory. That’s what people don’t understand. They say, “The Wizards are better without me.” No, the Wizards are great. They’re a good team without me. They’re a great team with me. Last year, Eddie Jordan was the All-Star coach. There’s a reason because of that. We were the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conference. Right now, without me, they’re the third or fourth best team in the Eastern Conference.

Just imagine if you have a solid group like Detroit. If you take Chauncey Billups off the Pistons right now, they’re still going to win games. They’re a great group like us. We’ve been together for three years, four years now … some of us, for all five years. So, we know how to get it done. This is not a young team where you take the best player off of a young team and they go down the toilet. We have two other All-Stars on this team and Brendan is playing like an All-Star center. You have veterans in Daniels, DeShawn, Songaila and Roger Mason who’s been around and he’s hitting shots. Andray Blatche is doing good. Then you have Nick Young who can score like anybody in this league. You put that all together with two All-Stars, and you’re going to be a good team. You’re not supposed to lose games. I don’t think people understand how good we are, with me or without me.

We started off the season by losing four with me, then we won three, then I went out and from there they just took over. It’s just about confidence.

Everybody is just judging off of this season. They see the season start off 0-4 and then we win three and then I go out and shut it down, then they won three more, then they lost, then they won a couple more and a couple more and everybody said, “Man, they are better without him!” No, they’re a good team without me! You have two All-Stars on that team still. It’s just like if you take Steve Nash off of Phoenix, they’re not going to go in a tanker and just lose every game. People assume if you take the best player off a team that they’re just going to go tank it.

Like Miami, they were doing bad without Wade. They were doing horrible without Wade. Then Wade comes back in and they think that he’s just going to take them to the top. No! They just have a bad team right now. That’s all it is. Even with Wade, they have a bad team right now. He needs some younger players and some shooters over there with him. When you lose all those shooters and Wade has to be the shooter and the driver too, it’s hard to get everybody involved.

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

Let’s keep track of the smiles in 2008. Ned Dishman/NBAE/Getty Images

Happy New Years!

My holidays went good. Everyone made it to the New Year with no problems.

I’m having the train set for my kids set up in a couple days, but all the other toys from F.A.O. Schwartz came in. They enjoyed it. My daughter got her first little three-year old bike and she got her little BMW car, so she had fun with that. She also got a life-size elephant stuffed animal.

The toys were from Daddy, Daddy Santa.

This whole little 31st to the 1st to the 2nd, I’ve been figuring out my New Year’s Resolution. I was going around ear hustling everybody else and trying to figure out what their’s was. They say some stupid stuff sometimes. Like some impossible stuff and you wonder why you can never stick to it.

Like, “I’m going to be happy every day.”

Or, “I’m not going to be mad … ever.”

I’m like, “OK, I’ll see you next week … angry.”

But mine this year, I got a good one, I’m going to help everybody out: You have to write down everything whether you are happy or not. Just if you were happy or not, that’s it. Write down if it was a full day of happiness, a half day of happiness or if you were just sad and something happened to mess up your day. You just write it down every day.

So on the 1st, I was happy. Day 2, I was happy. So that’s two out of two in 2008 so far.

I’m just saying, it let’s you know how many days you was actually happy in that month. So if you get 25 out of 30 days happy in that month, you’re doing good. Even 20 days out of 30, that’s pretty good. It lets you know that you’re doing OK. If you’re at 15 and 15, you need to reevaluate yo’ life. If you’re happy every other day, that ain’t too good.

People get to actually look at what’s going on and view back on that month and be like, “Oh that’s what made me mad on this day,” and this and this and this.

You don’t need to write down what made you happy. You write down what made you mad, because you can figure out what made you mad for it not to be a happy day and try to change it in the future. Like, “I got a ticket and it messed up my whole day.” You can look back and be like, “Man, did I really let that ticket effect me?” You know, stuff like that.

I came up with this by just listening to people. Just listening here and there.

Stuff like, “I’m going to go to church EVERY SUNDAY!”

“Were you at church every Sunday last year?”

“No, I only went twice.”

“Well, you’re only going to go twice this year too. You’re going to go right now, and most likely, Easter.”

People’s expectations are just too-too high as soon as this New Year kicks in.

It messes them up. Like, “Oh yeah! In 2008, I’m going to be rich!”

OK, you was poor and broke for the last 27 years, and this is the year? OK … what you ‘bout to do, rob a bank?

Happiness takes care of everything else. It lets you see stuff. It lets you see opportunities going on around you. If you have an open, happy mind, things fall in your lap. Things happen for you. If you’re happy 25 days out of 31 and it’s promotion time … BOOM … that’s your chance. If you’re the office lady that everybody hates, well, you’re probably going to have another miserable month. Opportunities seem to find their way when you’re on the up-and-up and upbeat.

I’m not saying just going out there and start smiling every day, but just monitor. Monitor your day by day for the New Year. This is for all the people who are going out there saying they want to be happy for the New Year and they want something different in their life. Start monitoring. Monitor your day-by-day happiness, and from there, you’ll be surprised.

Getting My Swag Back
I’ve been rehabbing like usual.

I’m feeling good. I shot on the court for the first time, got me some shots up. Had me 275 makes. The only reason was because of the shots I was shooting them from. They were all from 15 feet. No jumping yet, no running yet, I’m just taking my time.

I know February was the date that I told, but now I’m thinking March 15 is the day. I don’t want to come back and be limpy.

We watched the Miami Heat and I see Wade out there … and I remember seeing Kobe like that … and that’s what I didn’t want to do, to be out there limping and trying to push it, because it don’t look good. You don’t play well, you’re always guarding the injury and you can see Wade right now out there guarding it, and that’s the only reason the Heat are struggling so bad. He’s not being Wade right now. He’s not playing up to his potential because of the injury he’s coming back from.

They say I’ll be at 100 percent around February, mid-February, somewhere around the All-Star break, but I’m just going to be in extra wait mode, just to be sure.

I’m still riding the bike and doing the walking in altered G, you know, doing the stuff I’m supposed to be doing. I’m going straight by the doctor’s orders.

Hot Blazers
The Blazers don’t lose, huh?

They was on fuego, wasn’t they? Thirteen wins in a row. I have not gotten more than six wins in a row my whole career.

That was The Team to end 2007. They was on fire, I was actually cheering for them, them young boys was doing their thing. That was surprising that you’re having these players like Aldridge and Roy miss games and they’re still just pulling together.

You have all these older teams that are starting to fall apart now. Teams that were really dominant a couple years ago, just are going down in shambles.

Chicago Coaching Change
You seen the Bulls coach was fired? I seen that coming.

You can see it coming, especially this year and a little bit of last year, that he wasn’t going to be able to coach those guys no more.

One, because, what makes you great is the same thing that breaks you down. What made him great was the same thing that got him fired. He’s a disciplinarian. He’s one of those old coaches with old mentalities of run, run, run. He’s going to put you in the dirt. You make a mistake in practice, you’re gonna run. You make a mistake in this, you’re gonna run. You make a mistake in that, you’re gonna run.

When you try to build rookies and young players, that’s going to work.

But for four or five years, these were the same guys. They never really got any new guys. These are the same guys … Kirk, Luol Deng, Ben Gordon, Duhon … these are the same guys that were there in 2005 when he first got there.

Eventually they’re going to be like, “Hey, man, we’re too old for this. We don’t want to run all damn day.”

After a while, it’s just like you’re beating a dead horse, and one day the horse is like, “Well, screw it. I’m not getting up. I’m just going to sit here until we get somebody else here who is going to treat me nice.”

When you’re a coach, you got to have a happy medium. And it’s so hard. Especially in today’s game. Everybody makes so much money, and when you make so much money, you have your opinion on the team.

It’s kind of funny, you look at Phil Jackson. He’s a disciplinarian, he’s a great coach, in the Hall of Fame, Mr. Basketball as a coach … if he’s the best and he’s not running his guys like crazy, some of these other coaches should be like, “Hey, let’s take a chapter out of Phil’s book.”

It’s like Eddie. He doesn’t run us like that. If we lose a game we’re not supposed to lose he’ll say something like, “We look like we’re out of shape.” That’s something he’ll say.

Actually he’ll say, “Oh, y’all out of shape, huh? Alright, since y’all want to be out of shape, we’re going to run.”

And we don’t want to run, so we’re going to go extra hard to prove to him that we get his point.

There’s way to get to your players. Instead of saying, “Oh, you made a turnover? You know what? Everybody on the line … Oh, you didn’t block that shot? Everybody on the line …”

That’s when players start looking at other players like, “Man, how come you didn’t block that shot?”

Then it’s like, “Well it’s not our fault, we can’t be perfect, it’s his fault.”

At the end of the day, Skiles is going to get another job. He’s going to get another job and he’s going to do the same thing. He’ll take a raggedy team and make them great. He’ll make them a playoff-contending team.

That’s not the guy you want to see get fired. It’s not his fault. But at the end of the day, you got to look somewhere. Usually coaches are the first to go. I mean, a General Manager can’t fire himself.

The coach has got to work with what the coaches get. I don’t believe in firing coaches like that though. Back in the day they wasn’t changing coaches like that. Phil Jackson never got changed.

Truthfully, to be honest, I don’t understand Skiles’ firing. Because, if you ever look back at the beginning of one of their seasons, they always started off the same way. You say the same thing about the Bulls every year: “Oh, they can’t score.”

“They can’t put the ball in the basket.”

“They don’t have any post play.”

This and that and they end up winning 50 games, 47 games, 49 games and then they’re in the playoffs sweeping Miami. So, what’s the big deal? If that’s the way they start off, that’s the way they start off.

Most really, really good defensive teams start off bad because they haven’t put their offense together while they’ve been focused so much on defense.

Unless you’re a team like San Antonio, you know, but a team like that, I know Pop isn’t there running those guys like crazy. A lot of old coaches have that old mentality of “We’re going to run you, run you, run you” to discipline, but today, players talk to each other. We know whose teams are running and whose teams aren’t.

It has a factor on free agency even. That’s why you never see any big-big free agents going to some of these potent teams, or these disciplinary type teams. The player’s like, “Well, I’m kind of old, I don’t know if I feel like doing this … I just came from over here on this other team, and we didn’t run like this.”

My Wizards
We finished off the month above .500, and we have to keep going. This is going to be the month where we go West sometime, and we’re about to start playing some real teams. We just got to withstand.

We have a back-to-back against the Celtics too. Oh man. I might suit up. But it’s hard to talk trash to a team like that. Especially right now, because they beat us bad when I was playing.

They haven’t went West yet either though. They still have to play San Antonio, Dallas … but, at the end of the day, they only play those teams twice.

I haven’t made a road trip with the team yet. I’m probably going to pick whatever city sounds nice. If it’s a really bad city like Minnesota I’ll be like, “Oh my God! Whoo! I got some swelling, coach. I don’t think I can make this one.”

Now, if it’s Miami, I’m like, “Coach, the sun and the weather and the beaches in Miami give my knee a really good feeling. I better come.”

Been Watching Denzel
I’ve been watching a lot of Denzel. I didn’t want to get The Debaters on bootleg, because I wasn’t sure of how the quality would be. When I see Denzel in action, I need the full quality.

I’m going to watch The Debaters tonight probably. At the end of every year into the beginning of every year, I go back and I just look at all Denzel.

Malcolm X, Training Day, Pelican Brief, Devil in a Blue Dress … I just watch them.

When I watch actors, and I don’t know why I’m so infatuated with actors and how they act, because I’ll watch a movie and I don’t watch it just for the story. I’ll watch it and I’ll be like, “What made you make that facial expression right there?” Or, “Why did you look up that way?” They’ll make it feel like it’s just regular talking, like they’re not even being filmed through little things like facial expressions.

I’ll be looking at our commercials, you know, mine … D-Wade’s … and I mean, we cool but we ain’t actors.

Then I remember when I was doing a commercial this summer with KG, Dwight, Chauncey, Tim Duncan and T-Mac, and we had to do it non-scripted, and instead of just having a conversation, you get stuck because you don’t know what to say next.

It’s just like my GilIIZeros commercials. I didn’t know how to act. So I did back acting to make it look funny.

So when I sit there and watch movies I’m always thinking, “Man! Man, he’s a good actor. He just makes this conversation seem so real! He’s making me believe that this is real and this is not an act.”

How can you make it not look like it’s acting?

I don’t have a favorite role by him. And it’s not like picking a favorite performance by Denzel would be like choosing your favorite child. I hear people say you can’t choose between children, but hey, people got their favorite children. Don’t lie. Everybody got their favorite.

Parents are out there lying to their kids like, “You’re my favorite … You’re my favorite, too.”

Picking my favorite Denzel movie is hard for me, because he has so many different roles. I can watch him all day, I can watch Jack Nicholson … Anthony Hopkins. Those three guys I can just sit there and watch them and watch them and watch them. Back in the day, Eddie Murphy, he was up there too. I liked him before Doolittle and before those movies like The Haunted Mansion.

Before that, Golden Child, Trading Places, Coming to America, Beverly Hills Cop …

But the movie watching right now takes up a lot of my day. I recommend that anybody go watch a good movie. If you can afford it, go to the movies. If you can’t, they sell bootlegs for like $3.99 or $4.99, or you can go rent a movie.

After the 2002-03 season I went to the Houston-L.A. Lakers playoff series in L.A. Guess you passed right by me and said, “What’s happenin’?”

Denzel Washington!

He was like, “How are you doing Gilbert? Great season.”

I was stuck. I didn’t know what to say. “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” I didn’t know whether to say, “Hey, Mr. Denzel Washington.”

“Hey, Mr. Washington.”

“Hey, Denzel.”

I didn’t know which one to say. It’s not like I see this person every day and get to talk to him. I’d only seen him in movies. For all I knew, he was fake.

So it was like, “Hey, uhhhh, Mr. Washington, Denzel, Man, Mister … How you doing?”

The only person I wasn’t star struck around because I seen him every weekend, was Jamie Foxx. This is before he blew-blew into Oscars and stuff like that. We used to play basketball at Valley College. It was a J.C. behind my high school. I was one of the only high school kids playing with the grown ups. All these celebrities like Brian McKnight and all these little comedians played pick-up games on Saturdays and Sundays. Now a lot of them play in the NBA Entertainment League.

So I met a bunch of people through that, but I still haven’t met the big names like Halle Berry. I just see these people on TV. People think, “Yeah, G.A.! You must be hanging out with all the movie stars!”

Nah, man. I don’t think I want to either. I remember what happened with the Denzel story. I don’t want to look stupid again.

I think I’ve tried to block out that memory, but I do remember Denzel had on a black and white sweater and all I could think was, “Man, I need to go get that sweater Denzel had today because if Denzel had it on, it gots to be good.”

Redskins and GilIIZeros
It’s about time things came together for the Redskins. I hope my D.C. Football GilIIZeros helped them win.

At the end of the day, if the team really wants to get in, the team is going to get in. That’s how I looked at it.

Hopefully, Redskins fans support the shoes and go look for them.

It’s hard because I get a lot of people asking, “Where do I get the shoes?”

For a lot of people who don’t know out there, all the colors you guys see are underground and sold in underground stores. So you have to check there for the special color ways. Foot Locker, Foot Action, Finish Line, etc. only have the in-line colors like the white on white, black and gold, white and blue, the basic colors.

But if you go online to GilTV and see those commercials and you’re looking at these shoes and you’re like, “Oh man, I like these shoes.” You aren’t going to find them in the basic stores, because they’re so limited and you have to go to the underground stores to find them.

I saw in a Redskins chat room somebody was like, “WHERE DO WE FIND THESE SHOES! I SAW TWO PEOPLE AT THE GAME WITH THESE SHOES! OMG!!!!”

So, I’m telling you again, you got to go underground. I made the shoes for the real sneakerheads. I don’t know if it was a mistake because when kids started seeing them, they thought all the colors would be available everywhere.

GilIIZeros Near You
Store	Location
Major DC	Washington, DC
Dr. Jay’s	New York, NY
Shoe Gallery	Miami, FL
Fight Club	New York
Expressions	Boston, MA
Jimmy Jazz	New York
Sportie LA	Los Angeles, CA
Moe's Sneaker Spot	Queens, NY
UNDEFEATED	Los Angeles, CA and Las Vegas, NV
WISH	Atlanta, GA
Millennium Shoes	Inglewood, CA
Phenom	Kansas City, KN
The 400	Denver, CO

My Olympics Goal
The Olympics are coming up, and I’m trying to get to the tryouts, that’s all. I just need to forget about what happened before and move on. At first, I didn’t want to go back, but at the end of the day it’s still a long, long, longtime dream of mine since I first seen the Dream Team and had that poster with Charles, Bird, Magic and Ewing and Jordan trying to jump over the fence as baby little kids.

Ever since I had that, I fell in love with it. I think as a basketball player, I’d rather have an Olympic gold medal than an NBA ring, to be honest. I’m one of the only American basketball players that feel that way.

A ring, that’s just for your city, that’s for your team. A gold medal, that’s for your country. You’re representing the country you live in. I can go to a team and say, “Hey, let me go ahead and jump on this team and win a championship,” but the Olympics don’t work like that.

That’s why I took it so hard when I was cut because, on my totem pole, that’s higher than anything. I’d rather have that than anything. If at the end of the day I have a gold medal and I don’t get a ring, hey, they can’t tell me nothing.

That’s how I feel. A ring is every year. I can just sign one-year deals and hop on every team that I think can win a championship that year and in 10 years, I might pull out three of them. Who knows? But the Olympics are only every four years and it comes down to where your career is at that time. For all I know, this could be my last tryout for them. When the next round comes around, I might not be popular. Who knows?

About to Turn 26
All I got for Christmas from my Dad was a call, “Happy Birthday, son.”

My birthday is on January 6. No plans this year. But I do have my birthday gifts from friends: An Olympic autographed Scottie Pippen ball, a Michael Jordan autographed bat and jersey from when he played baseball, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell autographed basketball together and shoes.

Right now I just have all this stuff, but probably after my next contract I’ll build a gym and display all of it. It’s just something to reflect on for when I get old. It will be something to keep my mind stimulated when I get into those old ages, especially if I’m not coaching or around the young players of that day or that millennium, or whatever you want to call it.

I can reflect and remember those times when me and Wade, me and LeBron was going at it, or when I went down to L.A. and had 60, because when you’re older, all you have is memories. I know a lot of people don’t collect stuff, and I know I used to look at people collecting what I thought of as dumb things – they kept a shot glass or this empty champagne bottle – and I was like, “What’s the point in that?”

Now I see it, it’s just the memories. All the jerseys I’ve collected, these are my memories right here. Truthfully, that’s all you have as an athlete when you leave and you go into real society again, it’s all you have to keep you going. I know Charles Barkley is doing announcing and when he’s watching one of those really, really good games all that’s going through his mind is, “Man, I remember our game against the Bulls … Whoo!” And you just reflect. When I’m watching games right now with this injury even, I just reflect.

Speaking of autographs, I had a guy, his name is Sung Quinn, he was a guy at the mall and I had him paint a poster of my first All-Star experience. He took the picture of the whole East team from 2005 and painted it.

I’m almost done getting every player to sign it. After three years, the only guy left I need to sign it is Paul Pierce.

Wade was the most recent guy I got. For the last couple years, Wade and Shaq were never in D.C. at the same time. There was always one missing. So I had Shaq and I just got Wade.

If I get Paul Pierce it will be complete. I call it the “One-of-One.”

So, for some of the young players out there, start collecting things. You never know when it ends and you just want to reflect. Some players look at me like, “Why are you collecting?”

I know one group that doesn’t collect: The superstars of the league. I mean, they’ll keep some things. I know Kobe probably kept the 20,000 points ball.

But if I get to 20,000, OK, I want that ball, but I also have the first basketball that I scored my first two points with. I got all my game-winner balls. I got them all. The 60-point ball, got that. I even have the new ball that they brought in for a half a year, I have it from every team with a stamp of the team’s name on it. I collect everything. I have my first triple-double ball. You never know. I just keep it.

New Years Resolution Recap
So everybody, it’s a New Year. Don’t do last year’s stuff. We’re not going to do last year’s stuff, people. We’re going to do New Year’s stuff. So make up a list of stuff you can do this year. Don’t go back to the old stuff. I don’t want to see people doing the same things they were doing in 2007.

If y’all doing the same things you were doing in 2007, I ain’t answering the phone. If you were asking for money in 2007, don’t ask for money in 2008. Ask for a job.

I want to try something different. I want to be happy. I’m going to start with 20 days a month, and if that’s too easy I’ll go for 25. I want to get my grown-man on and I want to be happy.

We’ll start off with something simple, then we’ll do something different. I am one person who is glad that 2007 is over with. I hated 2007. I’m going to be the first one to say it. Besides my party and the trampoline in Vegas, other than that, overall the 2007 experience for me was a D. If you take that report card home with a D, you’re in trouble. 2007 was bad, so hopefully 2008 is better. I’m not trying to look for an A, people. A C+ means I don’t have to take that class no more. That’s all I’m looking for, just a little upgrade.

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

You had a good run, Penny. Thanks for the autographs. Victor Baldizon/NBAE/Getty Images

Just had to turn off my Halo game to focus and do a little blogging.

I got my Christmas gifts. It went great. I got something I’ve been wanting to do for the last … whooo … six-seven years now.

I usually don’t accept gifts for Christmas because I don’t like giving them out, but I was truly surprised when I received a couple of presents the other day. Most people say they don’t know what to get somebody who can get anything they want, that’s their excuse all the time.

But one of my friends got me something I’ve wanted since I was little. I was in shock because it came out of nowhere.

I got two gifts related to Penny Hardaway.

You know how you open up the World Series and throw the first pitch? Penny Hardaway did that one time, I remember seeing it and he autographed the ball he threw to the catcher. One of my friends found the ball on auction and got it.

Then, I woke up the other day and saw a package at my door. The package was Lil’ Penny in a box, something I’ve wanted since I was little. I was just so happy about it.

It’s Lil’ Penny man!

So I have to thank John and Scott for the gifts. Scott is a tattoo artist that does tattoos for some of the team, he’s the one that gave me the ball.

It’s hard to see the real Penny go from the Heat, but he did what he did for the game. He got fans like me excited about watching the NBA and trying to be like him. I want to personally thank him for signing the jerseys I sent to him. He signed an Orlando one, a New York and a Suns jersey for me.

I got those, I got the baseball he threw and now I got Lil’ Penny. He has his own shrine in my house now.

I think it was amazing what my friends did for me though. It didn’t even cost thousands of dollars. All it took was time and thoughtfulness. That was great.

I know it’s a few days before Christmas and people are getting gifts that they don’t really want. Sometimes people say, “It’s the thought that counts,” while thinking, “What the hell were you thinking when you thought about this gift?” But at the end of the day there are a lot of people out there who aren’t getting gifts, so you have to appreciate if somebody did get you a gift, even if you don’t like it. It’s still Christmas.

Trip to NYC
It went great! I hobbled up to New York to F.A.O. Schwartz. I actually took the train in. It was me, DeShawn, DeShawn’s cousin and funny-man Nick. Nick just wanted to go because he’s never been to New York and been able to hang out.

He was the worst person to invite. He complained going there and coming back. He complained the whole time. For one, he didn’t bring his ID and we ended up getting him on the train anyway, and then we thought the returning trains stopped at 5 p.m. and we didn’t get to New York City until 4:30.

So Nick was talking about, “Oh, I’ll just drive! I’ll just take a car and drive all the way back!” Because our alternative was taking a plane coming way back. But then we found a train that actually took us back.

He just complained the whole time.

Me and D-Steve shopped and I bought my daughter a Mercedes Benz, a little car so she can go ahead and just gas it up herself.

They had a little train set which kind of tricked me a little bit. You know how they have the display toys you can play with? Well they had a little display train set in the store and it looked like it was going in and out of mountains and stuff and I think it was a Harry Potter theme.

So I was thinking, “Oh, man. That’s nice. I think my kids will like that.”

So I told the salesman, “Yeah, umm, I want that right there.”

He was like, “OK,” and he gave me this box.

I was like, “Uh, I don’t … Shouldn’t this box be a little bit bigger? Because I don’t think those mountains can fit in this little box right here.”

He was like, “Oh, no, no, no. You’re confused.”

So I was like, “Yeah, a little.”

“The mountains and the snow and all this stuff, that don’t come with it. Just the train and the train tracks and then you just put it on your carpet.”

Then I’m like, “Well, then it’s not that attractive anymore. I mean the only thing that’s attracting me is that it’s going through the mountains with the little people figurines and the train station and the whole little get together. If I’m going to buy this, I want it to look like this. Exactly how it is here. So, whoever made this, right here, I want it.”

They had to call the people who actually put the display up in the store and they’re going to bring it and set it up at my house next week.

I told them that I didn’t want the little train on the carpet. I had that when I was little. That wasn’t fun.

So, I bought my kids that and I bought them a whole bunch of big teddy bears, a life-size elephant and then my daughter likes Brother Bear so I bought her a Brother Bear for her to play with.

Having a Birthday Near Christmas – Me and My Daughter
Her birthday is on the 24th, and I didn’t want to rip her off, so I bought her all toys and all play stuff for Christmas and for her birthday I bought her a television for her room and a karaoke machine so she can talk on it. She’s in that stage where she’s talking in sentences but she’s really not talking in sentences. So most of the time she’ll probably sit there and just say, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” into the mic. Yeah … that will be annoying after a week. I’m also going to get her out of a crib and get her a bed now. So all of the important things she’ll get for her birthday.

My birthday is 11 days away from Christmas so my dad used to just buy me one gift, one good one. But one year, I think this was the last year I got Christmas gifts, he bought me the ’95 Jordans as my Christmas gift and then an Orlando Magic Starter jacket, for my birthday. Do they make those Starter jackets still? Those were bad back in the day. The NBA needs to renew that partnership and go ahead and bring them back.

I’m in the Christmas thread a little bit. I’m trying to enjoy it and get ready for 2008. You try to always change your life just a little bit for the New Year, so I’m trying to get my grown man on for 2008.

I Talked to Ben Gordon
For all the Chicago fans out there who heard about Ben Gordon wanting to talk to me, we sat down and talked for like 30 minutes. He wanted to pick my brain a little bit and we did some chit-chatting. You know, I didn’t actually say his name in my blog, but he still wanted to talk to me about that part of the market.

He was telling me the real story, the part that people wasn’t getting. He was like, “G.A., I respect your game, and we did a shoot together in the past so I know you’re cool, but it was hard to read what you were really saying, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

He was telling me, “They didn’t even negotiate with me. They were like, ‘This is what it is, take it or leave it’ and that was it.”

I’m thinking, “Damn, that’s kind of messed up,” in my mind because when you have a player who has done a lot for your franchise … two years ago y’all would have been signing this man to $75-million plus, and now two years later it’s just like, “Take this or leave it!” It’s frustrating. I understand where he was coming from. I was trying to let him know that there’s way to be like, “OK, if this is what you offer, I’ll take that, but could you differ some of this?”

So it works for both of us. It’s like, “You’re paying me this now, but in 10-years, 20-years, 30-years from now you owe me $10 million more and it doesn’t hurt you now.”

It works both ways. I was just giving him some of the knowledge I know. And the same thing with Deng. I ended up finding out that with Deng; they didn’t even offer him $60 million. No, they didn’t even come close to that money.

Ben was like, “I heard if they would have offered him $58 million, he would have took that.” So Luol didn’t actually end up turning down what people thought he turned down.

Once I heard Ben wanted to talk to me, I told a PR guy, “When the Bulls come, just tell Luol and Gordon to meet me in the weight room,” because I knew nobody would be in there.

But I was actually walking in when they came so I just pulled Ben in there and we chit-chatted and I was just telling him stories. There really are true stories out there of people turning down this money and opting out and they’re not getting that money back.

I have a real close friend who I played a year with, Earl Boykins, who opted out of $3 million and, right now, Earl’s not playing. That’s why I said it. There are stories out there like that, people just aren’t hearing them.

Earl, that’s my man. Earl should be playing for any team and then he opts out of $3 million thinking he’s worth more, and no one ended up paying him. Now he’s sitting out and he has to wait for somebody to pick him up later on.

It’s kind of messed up, but for some reason, like I told Ben, these owners aren’t playing right now. The days of maxing out players who really aren’t max players, it’s looking like that’s over. Two-three years ago, everybody was getting the max. I was like, “Damn! He’s getting the max?! He averaged seven and seven … Whooo! All right, can I opt out of my deal now then?”

But those days are over. You have to start paying attention to what’s going on. You have to start paying attention to what’s going on now. I told him, “Hey, two years ago if you go in and they offer you $50 million, yeah, you turn that down.”

But right now, those players can’t concentrate. I was watching them the other day and they’re the same players, but it looks like they’re not concentrating. I remember when I was a free agent, it was easy for me to play because I just figured I was coming back to Golden State. I didn’t think I was worth anything. It never hit my mind until I was already out of the season and my agent said, “Hey, we can get this …”

I was like, “Oh, really?” Because, at the time, the Warriors had offered me $42 million and I was like, “Forty-two? Cool! I’m back.” So there was no pressure on me.

But people playing with trying to go for their contract, that’s hard. People don’t realize that. It’s like being watched at your job everyday, anytime you mess up. You’re up for promotion and there’s somebody just watching you everyday, every move, every move you make … it’s hard to perform like that. And you can see it in them. You can just see that they’re playing like they don’t want to make mistakes. They’re playing like, every shot I miss, “Man! I missed it!” It’s so hard to play like that. It’s easier for the older guys to do it, but it’s the young talent that really doesn’t know how to play under pressure like that, especially going into free agency.

Hopefully they can turn it around. I remember that Bulls team when they were 0-9 because we played them in the playoffs that year. The same guys that are up for contracts right now are the same guys that are going to get them out of that funk. You just hate to see somebody like Deng get traded and go other places because he did so much for that franchise and got them out of that Jerry Krause era of bad negotiating.

And you wonder why the Bulls broke up the first time … because of contract issues. Scottie Pippen was the second- best player on the team but getting the sixth-highest paid player. Toni Kukoc was getting paid more than Scottie Pippen! And you wonder why that franchise broke away the way it did …

I only spoke to Gordon and we talked about Deng, because Deng was on the court shooting. I just sat there and talked to Gordon and he said he’ll talk to Deng. Truthfully, Gordon was just a young fella just trying to get information.

That’s all I was blogging about in the first place. Talk to me and get your information. I’m actually supposed to be talking to Iguodala pretty soon to let him know.

You know what’s so funny? Gordon said it: “The messed up part is, it’s our whole class.” I understand that, when you have a bunch of players from the same draft class, you guys are trying to out-do each other and it’s competitive. But like I was telling him, “Hey, I know it’s competitive, but you don’t want to be that odd-man out.”

Right now, Kirk Hinrich signed his deal, Nocioni signed his deal … they’re breathing. It’s easy for them to just go out there and play.

All-Star Voting
I’ve seen the numbers on the first All-Star voting. I think I’m fifth behind Dwyane, J-Kidd, Vince and Ray Allen. You know, those are some good guys to be behind, I guess. It’s about performing. Right now I’m not playing so no one is seeing me out there hitting game-winners and 50- and 40-point nights so it’s hard for people to remember until you’re on that floor. I don’t expect to get a whole bunch of votes, but it would be great if I can sneak in. If I get voted to be an All-Star, because that’s around my comeback date, I will be in there. Just throw a couple of votes for me in there. I’m not saying to vote for me everyday … but every other hour, that would be nice. You don’t have to vote everyday, just every other hour. Go ahead and I’ll beat them.

RJ for All-Star
I hope this is RJ’s year. It’s about time that I get another player from our team to do something. Richard is third on that list on that list of “doing things” from our Arizona squad. It’s me first, then it’s Luke Walton and then it’s Richard Jefferson. The only reason I pick Luke Walton is because he played with Shaq and Kobe and Karl Malone and Gary Payton, so that automatically puts you in second because he played with four Hall of Famers and he actually played. Then you go to third with Richard. Me and Richard are pretty competitive with each other. Now is finally his chance to make an All-Star team. Last time he was going to make the All-Star team was when he broke his hand because Tayshaun Prince pushed him. That was the reason he didn’t make it the last time he should have. Hopefully he can get there this year and the coaches vote him in because he’s playing phenomenal over there.

Too Many Injuries
Is the game exciting right now? It seems like everybody is getting hurt. I don’t know. I’m watching games and it seems like everybody is hurt. Zo just went down, LeBron got hurt and had to miss five games so his team was looking like dirt, Wade is still trying to make a comeback. It’s like, man, we need to get the stars of the league healthy-healthy. It’s hard to say why this is happening. You could say it’s summer play, but that’s kind of hard when you have players like Melo playing in the summer and playing during the season and performing like crazy. I don’t know, it’s hard to say.

Tang It Up!
I’ve been watching a lot of 24. Whoo! That’s my man, Jack Bauer. I’m glad he’s doing 48 days in jail for drinking and driving. Don’t D.U.I. But that really gets me thinking like, “Come on, Jack. Use some of those moves you be using on TV to break out of a real jail.” But anyway, I’ll be sitting on my couch watching season after season of 24 and I’ll get my Smart Water and what I do, because I hate getting up back and forth, I just keep mixing myself Tang. I have my powdered Tang and I have like 12 bottles of water and I mix it in and just Tang it up! Just in case I need to get up to get a flavored drink, BOOM, just throw a little Tang in the water. I’m drinking Tang, baby! Al Bundy style. Al Bundy, baby, that’s where I got it from. On Married with Children, Al Bundy used to drink Tang. Tang is good!

Close Shave
I got rid of the beard. I had to cut the beard. But I still have the ‘do though. I still got the doo. I don’t know what I want to do with it yet. I’m going to cut it, I know I am, I just don’t know when. Maybe for the New Year. For now though, I kept the ‘do but I had to cut the beard because I was looking like Bill Cosby in Uptown Saturday Night. My hair looks like I was on the road for two weeks, like I went on a West Coast roadie and couldn’t find a barber. That’s all.

Are the Wizards Better without Me?
The Wizards are playing good right now. When we lost the first five games in a row, I said we were going to follow that up by winning seven in a row. We looked at the schedule and there were seven winnable games. When I played, before I went out, we won three of them and then they won three more after that.

That’s what critics do. If the Cavs win two games without LeBron you’ll hear somebody say, “They’re better without LeBron in the lineup.” The only way you can test that is if he misses a whole 82 games and then check out their record then, that’s all.

Right now we’re playing teams that we’re supposed to be beating up on and we’re winning them. We’re playing the teams that we’re supposed to be beating, with me in the lineup or without me in the lineup.

They’re all playing great as a team. People are stepping up. Caron is one, Antawn is doing what Antawn does. The two stars is doing what they do. Then it’s everybody else: Roger Mason is contributing, we got DeShawn playing the point and he’s doing it! In our system, pretty much all you need is somebody to bring up the ball and he’s getting everybody involved, passing the ball. Brendan Haywood is playing good. Andray Blatche is playing good. They’re all playing good as a team, people are stepping up.

You know, but to say they’re better without me? Hey, if they are, they are. If they’re not, they’re not. The only thing that tells is time. If they end the season and I don’t play another game and they finish 41-41, hey, they can do the same thing without me as they can with me.

Antonio Daniels is Hurt Too
Me and him have been chilling on the bench lately watching the team play. Especially with the two point guards, we sit there and try to see what’s going on and try to help the team out and stay at a distance at the same time. We were talking to each other on the bench the other game and we were both like, “Man, we’re taking too many jump shots.” At one point we were 4-for-24 on all jump shots and that was the reason the Bulls were getting back in the game because we were settling from the outside. Then in the fourth quarter, we only took two free throws. If you don’t have players telling you that and you’re on the court, you don’t see what’s wrong. You’re just playing your game. Then when you have somebody say, “Hey, look. We’re shooting all jump shots right now. We only have two free throws this whole fourth quarter.” And that’s when Caron went on a roll. He went to the basket, got the up-and-under and then hit two big threes. From there we got back in the game and went back to shooting jump shots again.

D.C. Football GilIIZeros Drop Soon
This is the color for the D.C. Redskins fans out here. I tried to hurry up and make a special Sean Taylor edition, but it was too late, they were already in shipping. It’s in his honor though. I think it’s great that football appreciated him the way they did and named him a Pro Bowl starter like that.

New Website
Check out my new Website. The bobblehead is the coolest.

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

I want the best for these guys. Kyle/Garrabrant/Widner/NBAE/Getty Images

I know you guys all just read my last blog. For some people it was a little controversial what I said about contracts. I just had a big debate with my pops, because you know, his whole defense was, “Who are you to tell them what to do in their contract?”

I was trying to explain to him in layman’s term that they could use another opinion on their side. No one’s talking to them as a player.

They’re getting advice from agents most likely, and I’m trying to give them a player’s perspective of things. That was it.

We argued for about two hours about this. He said, “How could you say that Iguodala is not worth $12 million and this and this…” And I’m saying; It’s not about what he’s worth, it’s about: You don’t turn down $12 million.

That’s all I’m saying. If you’re looking for a max contract, and max is $15 million and you’re trying to fight and scrape for $3 million extra, you need to reconsider and really think about that. If you’re willing to wait out a whole year to scratch for $3 million, then that’s where the problem comes in at.

Then he was like, “Well, Varejao signed.”

And I was like, “Well, for a guy who was asking for six years for $60 million …”

Dad: “But now he got three years.”

Me: “OK, you take the three years, you divide 60 by two and you have 30. So for a three-year deal, he should have had $30 million. He doesn’t. He has $17 million. So, at the end of the day, he missed 20 games and he didn’t win. There was no point proven.”

Then I was saying the same thing with Chris Webber. We talked about everybody. The Chris Webber thing, he had money and he turned it down and now, where is he at?

Dad: “Well, he’s resting.”

Me: “OK, same thing with Sprewell. He’s resting. Resting right out of the league.”

An agent is always going to tell you, “We can get the most money! We can get the most money!” but I was watching Inside the Actor’s Studio and I was watching Dave Chappelle and he said it in clear as day in layman’s terms: The older players are doing what the younger players don’t even know about.

You always should have a number in your head. No matter what the agent is saying, no matter what all the people are saying, you put a number in your head yourself and then when you go into free agency, you think about what that number you set for what you’re worth. Don’t let nobody else say what you’re worth.

So, if you go in your head and you say, “I want $60 million,” and your agent is saying, “You’re worth $75 million” and then the team says, “OK, we have an offer for $62 million” all of the sudden you’re sitting there fighting for $75 million when you’ve already surpassed your deadline. You’ve already surpassed the $60 million you set. They gave you $2 million more than you said you was worth. Now you’re sitting here trying to fight for some scrips and scraps and you might not even end up with the $60 million you was set on.

This league is not guaranteed. Everybody is not given the opportunity to turn down money like Juwan Howard did. He turned down $24 million and he ended up averaging a double-double, made the All-Star team and went out and signed for $105 million.

Those are rare occasions. Those are very rare. The kids out here, we’re not looking at that. We’re not looking at the examples that have been put in front of us.

Like I was telling my dad, I’m just talking in general. I use names to let those players know subliminally: Think about you. Don’t think about nobody else.

He was like, “Oh, you’re going to make a lot of enemies!”

Well, if they get mad because I’m telling them the truth, then that’s their problem, I can’t help it. If somebody was telling me, “G.A., you shouldn’t be turning down $12 million,” I’m going to sit there and think, “Damn. Why did I?”

Prime example No. 1: My contract.

I was in Golden State five years ago and really wanted to be back in Golden State. They had $42 million on the table and they said, “Yeah, and then we’ll sign you to big money the next year.” They said, “You got to sign for one year, you get your Bird rights, and then we can sign you to whatever the following year.”

Meanwhile, the $65 million was on the table in Washington, but I really wanted to go back to Golden State. I’m thinking, “Should I take this chance of going back for one year and signing? What if I get hurt? I just threw away $65 million …”

So I decided to say, “You know what? I’m going to Washington.”

That same year, my first in Washington, I got hurt. So then I’m thinking, “Goddamn, I’m glad I signed with the Wizards.” The same thing I was thinking was the same thing that happened. That’s all I’m saying. What if one of them got hurt? As players, owners are trying to use that against you. We don’t have no leverage.

That’s why I was telling my dad, I’m telling them to watch out, because this is a business deal. As hot as you are now, in a couple months you might not be that hot.

So once you get hurt, the owners are like, “Whoo, now we got him for cheap. You’re not worth that money any more. Let’s come on down to these five figures …”

Now you’re sitting there mad at your agent and mad at everybody. Nah, you should be mad at yourself. Think for your own.

It’s not that negotiating can’t work out, but you have to be careful. My agent, he was a great agent, he got me $65 million and my mind was at $50 million. I told him, “If you can get me 50, I don’t care who it is. The first one to bring it, just make sure it’s 50.”

That was my mind going into the summer. I went from $42 million to $65 million. I’ll take it. There you go. We’re going to Washington!

You pick all this up just traveling on the plane, road trips, bus rides. You hear stories. The same stories I’m hearing are the same stories they’re hearing but, when it’s your turn to be a free agent, you’re not thinking about that. You’re just not thinking about that. So then when I hear the story, I’ll go do the research. Like, “Oh damn, that really happened … yup … yup.” If they didn’t like the way I said it, why don’t they go ask those players? Go do it for yourselves. Go ask Joe Smith what he was thinking and what he’s thinking now. I mean, he’s still playing, but that $90 million he turned down … that would be hurting my heart to this day.

It’s just that we think, “It could never happen to us.” That’s all we think, that it could never happen to us.

Like I said, sometimes you can get hurt and things will still work out. Take Danny Manning and Nene Hilario, they’re rare. It’s rare that Nene turned down $55 million and the day he turned it down was the day he got hurt. He came back and signed a $60 million deal. Without playing. That’s rare. That is rare. Same thing with Danny Manning. They had promised him like $42 million from Phoenix. He got hurt and they gave it to him anyway. That rarely happens. I do my research, so I know.

Dad: “Well, you can’t tell a guy if he thinks he’s worth this that he’s actually worth this.”

Me: “You want to know somebody sure knows what I’m talking about and he didn’t pay attention to nobody else’s money? Carmelo Anthony.”

Him, LeBron and D-Wade were up for contracts. LeBron and D-Wade took the three-year deal, that man said, “I’m not paying attention to them. I want that six-year contract. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.”

You never know. We don’t know. You don’t know what the future holds. All you can do is look at what’s right in front of you.

I want these players to be happy. I don’t want them to look back at their careers and be like, “Man, how come I didn’t sign that deal?”

If you get more, congratulations. If you don’t, I told you so.

Just like when players sign new money, you get happy. As a teammate, you get happy for them. It’s like, “Yeah, go ahead and get it, young fella!”

Just like when I got my deal, when I made my first All-Star, Kevin Garnett was like “(Sniff, Sniff) Whooo! I smell new money on this bus!”

Chauncey Billups said the same thing. Players say, “Congratulations.” Any time a guy signs a new contract I say, “Hey, congrats.”

It’s like a little inner circle as players. You have players and you have owners. They don’t want to give it up.

There are rare deals. Carlos Boozer was a good example. Look, Carlos Boozer was playing with LeBron James and had a phenomenal year. There was a team option. They offered him a $42 million contract extension, because they knew if he would have played that third year and continued to do well, they wouldn’t be able to afford him. They were like, “We’ll let you out of the option, but you got to sign back with us for $42 million.” Then Utah offered him $68 million, and as a smart player, he was out of there. He made a verbal agreement, yes. But he didn’t sign no paper. And for a $26 million difference? If he would have went back to Cleveland, that would have been the wrong move. It’s hard to make that money. Unless you’re a Kobe, Shaq, A.I., Tim Duncan … you’re not guaranteed to make that kind of money back if you turn it down once.

Holiday Plans
I'm going to go to F.A.O. Schwartz this weekend to go get me some toys for the little ones. I’ll probably go ahead and take my wheelchair up there. They got the good toys there. I’m going to go do some shopping.

I don’t really do shopping usually though. I learned early, “If you ain’t going to get me nothing, I’m not going to get you nothing.”

When you’re an athlete, entertainer or whatever, people just assume that you’re supposed to buy them gifts and then when they don’t get you anything in return, they’ll hit you with the excuse, “Oh, you can get yourself anything.”

Oh, really?

We used to have a team gift exchange and they started getting mad at the gifts I was giving out. I gave Larry Hughes a bobblehead of me one year. I’ve also given out highlight tapes of myself. I give big, signed pictures of myself so they can look at me over the summer. You know, big ones that they can put on the wall or put it in the family room. That’s the kind of funny gifts I do. I don’t want to go out there and spend no money. I thought rich people were supposed to buy other rich people funny stuff, but they stopped doing the gift exchange because I wasn’t playing by the rules.

We used to do the same thing at Arizona. I’d ask the video guy to make me a highlight tape, and then I’d be like, “I know we’re going to miss each other over the Christmas break … So, here’s a highlight tape of myself! You go ahead and watch this.”

When you’re a professional athlete, you don’t really get to enjoy the holidays. You either got a practice on Christmas Eve or practice after Christmas or practice before Thanksgiving or you’re in another city for Thanksgiving … that’s why I said this Thanksgiving that I’m going to eat whenever I feel like eating.

I am doing one thing nice though that I’m looking forward to, on December 23rd we’re going to rent out a skating rink for two hours and I’m going to have 240 underpriveleged kids coming and we’re just going to have fun skating. I’m not going to be able to skate unless they attach some blades to my crutches, but it’s going to be nice. It’s just about making people smile and be happy around Christmas.

Good Luck, Coach
I talked to Coach Olsen right before I went in for my surgery and we were talking about my injury and I was seeing what was up with him and the team. As a player who played under him, sometimes it gets stressful, you need a rest every once in a while. They got Kevin O’Neil over there now and he’ll keep those boys in line. He’ll keep them straight until we see if Lute Olsen is going to come back or not next season. But, with as much as he’s done for the program, he deserves a year.

Good News, Kevin
Just want to send best wishes to Kevin Everett, the football player who they said would never walk again and he’s already walking. Congratulations, that’s truly overcoming the odds.

New GilIIZeros
The NBA LIVE 2008 shoe came out yesterday, and here’s a list of all of the local stores where you can go to find the special color ways of the GilIIZero near you.

GilIIZeros Near You
Store	Location
Major DC	Washington, DC
Dr. Jay’s	New York, NY
Shoe Gallery	Miami, FL
Fight Club	New York
Expressions	Boston, MA
Jimmy Jazz	New York
Sportie LA	Los Angeles, CA
Moe's Sneaker Spot	Queens, NY
UNDEFEATED	Los Angeles, CA and Las Vegas, NV
WISH	Atlanta, GA
Millennium Shoes	Inglewood, CA
Phenom	Kansas City, KN
The 400	Denver, CO

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

I didn’t play against Damon on Wednesday, but I talked against him. Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty Images

What’s on TV?
I’ve been watching a lot of sports lately. I was watching the USC vs. Memphis game and I was so bored watching that game. I realized, “Man, when I was in college, we were scoring 109.” That game went into overtime tied at 55. Like, what? That was the worst television game of college basketball that I’ve seen in a century, especially with two studs on the court.

One had six, one had 16 … no one wanted to hit the game winner, no one wanted to shoot the game winner … what kind of studs are these? I wasn’t even the No. 1 man on my team and you best believe I was shooting. I was shooting like I was the No. 1 guy. I’m like, “Well, I know they’re young …” But this is when you’re supposed to be dominant. At least one of you guys are supposed to dominate the game. But they were passing it and letting everybody else try to win the game. That’s not how you become a star.

Mayo, I wanted him to be aggressive. I know he was having a bad shooting night, but at the end, the last two minutes is when you’re supposed to dominate. Especially watching a kid like Kevin Durant last year, he was trying to outscore the whole opponent’s team. That’s what I want to see.

So that was boring.

And then I watched the Ravens-Patriots game. I don’t really watch football, but I turned on the last five minutes of it. After the game I heard all the complaints from the Ravens guys, but at the end of the day, you cost yourself the game because of all the penalties. The defensive holding wasn’t the one that killed me, the one that killed me was Bart Scott who got the two technicals when he threw the flag. He threw the flag, it cost them 30 yards and they missed the touchdown on the last play by three yards.

If I was one of the linemen, we would have been fighting in the locker room. Even though he thought the game was over with, anything can happen. A miracle can happen. And a miracle did happen. He threw the ball, you guys caught it and if he would have had them three yards he would have had if it wasn’t for the penalty, that would have been a touchdown.

Why I’ve been thinking about the Ravens game is because I’ve been reading this book called The Game Within the Game by Walt Frazier and I have a lot of respect for him now. I did already because he’s a pioneer and all, but now I have a lot, lot more. Like, he’s one of my favorites now. He never got a technical in his whole career. That is amazing. That is amazing. As much as this game is an up-and-down emotional game, he’s never lost his cool. That’s what reminded me of it when I was watching that football game. If he would have read Walt Frazier’s book, maybe he wouldn’t have thrown that flag.

I’ve also been watching my man, Jack Bauer! I watched all of Season Five and this is how stupid I am … I watched Season Five and I seen at the end that he got taken by some Chinese gangsters. He got taken by Consul Han. If anybody has seen Rush Hour, they know what Consul Han is. Jack Bauer got stolen by them, and I was like, “Why do the Chinese gangsters take him?” So now I have to go get Season Four and watch Season Four because I missed it, I thought I had already seen it, but I didn’t. I’m on Season Four, the last two hours.

Let’s Talk Contracts
I know a lot of people, you know, you hear about the Bulls team and why they’re losing because of their players entering free agency … You know, I want to say something to some of the young players out there in this game today. Especially somebody like Luol Deng who turned down that big contract. You don’t turn down $12 million. Period. That’s me, personally. I learned when I did my deal: Don’t look at other people’s money when you do your deal. Unfortunately, that’s what this league is about. They see a player that they think they’re better than, and then try to jump over them.

So now, Luol, you’re over here in a contract year and you’re not doing so well as a team. You get paid as a team. Now you’re going to be a free agent, and if you keep this up, that $12 million might not be on the table. So he turned down $12 million, Okafor said he wants Dwight Howard’s money … I mean, you ain’t Dwight Howard. It’s like them two had a discussion together about turning down the $12 million. Then Iguodala turned down $12 million … What is going on in the NBA? Iggy, you’re from Arizona, baby. You don’t turn down that much money. I don’t know who your agent is, but Agent Zero says you don’t turn down that $12 million.

I just don’t understand it. Then Varejao, he asked for $60 million and ends up with three years for $17 million. You could have got that contract last summer! You done missed 20 games of the season getting paid the same money you could have got last summer. For the deal you just signed, you could have got that this summer from the Cleveland Cavaliers without losing no basketball time. By the time you’re playing again and are ready back in your form, I’m going to be playing again! It’s a damn shame.

If I was they parents … Whooo! They would get some nice little butt whippings. Not trying to be funny here, but what’s the difference between 12 and 13 or 14? I mean, I know they’re all looking for max deals … but it’s like Charles Barkley says, max players put people in them seats. If you’re not putting people in them seats, you are not a max player.

If you average 15-16 points, you’re not a max player. It ain’t just about scoring, but I know Okafor is asking for Dwight’s money, but he’s doing what Dwight does. If you did what Dwight does, then that’s an argument, but you don’t. So don’t ask for Dwight money, $12,000,000 is what you get.

Same thing with Luol. I love the way Luol plays, but right now if you’re not better than Tayshaun and Carmelo and the best threes out there, if you aren’t valuable to your team like that … I mean he’s valuable to the Bulls, but not in the ways that those guys are. So, $12,000,000 is what you got.

Same thing with Iguodala. I know after A.I. left, you were supposed to be that No. 1 guy, but, the way he plays the game, he doesn’t have that. He’s not that type of player. He’s a second guy. An assistant coach told me a great story about him. When he was in Arizona, he said he was like 9-for-11 from the field and he apologized to the team for shooting 11 shots. From that day on, I just called him Scottie Pippen. He’s a Scottie Pippen type of player. A great, overall player. He’s your glue player. You need a superstar and then you need him. So $12 million is good for you. Nothing more and nothing less. Be happy with the $12 million.

With me, everybody was like “Oh, they overpaid!” And then two years later it was like, “Oh, they underpaid!” No! At the time, that’s what they offered me and that’s what I took. So if I become a four or five-time All-Star after that, hey, I wasn’t underpaid. At the time, that’s what I was worth. I might have increased my value since then, but at the time, that’s what I was worth.

At this time, $12 million is what they’re all worth. Nothing more and nothing less.

Same thing with Ben Wallace when he got paid his $60 million through four years. At that time, at that moment, that summer, he was worth that. I’m not saying that’s what he’s worth now, but at the time he signed, that’s what he was worth.

This is where when keeping it real goes wrong. Sometimes holding out is for the good, sometimes it backfires which is happening now to some players. This year has been the weirdest year I’ve ever seen with Matt Barnes signing a one-year deal, with Pietrus – who did well – signing a one-year deal and then I don’t know if you all even know this, when Jameer Nelson went at Devin Harris and said, “I should be getting paid like Devin Harris, what does he do?” At the end of the day, Devin Harris got paid what Dallas wanted to give him. That’s not Devin Harris’ fault. Don’t blame Devin Harris.

That’s what players don’t understand. You’re sitting there worrying about what somebody else is getting and you end up not seeing what’s in front of you and you’re going to be mad at the end of the day.

What’s the difference between 12 and 13 or 14? I know it’s $1 million, that’s a lot of money, but if you’re sitting there asking for 13-14 and they offer you 12 and you say, “No” then next summer you get offered, 10 or nine, now you’re going to be looking back like Joe Smith. He would never ever get that money back when he turned down that $90 million from Golden State. Y’all got to start looking at these people man. Sprewell, he turned down $21 million. I think he’s still holding out!

People don’t realize, these people do exist.

Samaki Walker – I played with Samaki. He told me the story. He turned down the money in Dallas because he was looking at all these other people getting paid. There’s all these other people getting max deals and he’s thinking, “Man, I was killing for Dallas so I wanted to hold out and then I end up signing a $3 million deal, got traded to the Lakers where I’m sitting behind Shaq, from there I came over here as a free agent.” He never made that money back. He ended up losing $40-some million.

You never know what’s going to happen. Nothing is guaranteed. I’m talking to three players that are trying to get $12 million and I gave you three examples of players who lost a total of almost $200 million. One lost $90 million and he ended up signing a $20-something million deal – Joe Smith. Samaki lost $40-something million and ended up signing a total of $8 million and Sprewell turned down $21 million.

That’s what I’m saying, people be looking at other peoples’ money. You’re looking at other peoples’ things and you’re trying to do your contract off of their contract. People are put in different situations. You don’t know what their situation is. When I signed my deal, I was happy to sign my deal. I wasn’t looking around to see who was getting paid, I didn’t care because I knew they shouldn’t be caring about mine.

The person who taught me that lesson was Jay-Z in one of his songs, “Where is the Love?” It’s something funny like, “I don’t (bleep) what you eat” or “What you eat don’t make me (bleep).” That’s basically the same thing I think.

It ain’t about just Iggy, Deng and Emeka, it’s about everyone. It’s about all young players out there who are going into negotiating and who are be going to do it in the future. If somebody offers you $12 million and you think you’re worth more than that, somebody should punch you in your face if you turn down that money. What if you get hurt and you can’t play basketball again? You just lost $60 million. You just threw away a great lottery ticket. That’s what people don’t understand.

My Team
The Wizards are doing well. They’ve been beating up on some good teams lately. They just beat down on the Cleveland Cavaliers, which without LeBron and Larry Hughes … that was like a practice squad.

Oh man, I was letting them have it on Wednesday. I was letting Damon Jones have it. I almost made them come out of form. I know they didn’t like me on the sidelines. I had that whole Cleveland Cavaliers team laughing. I was telling Damon Jones, “Hey, you didn’t sign up for this Damon! When you left Miami and came over here, you didn’t sign up to be playing out there like this … You are a shooter! They got you dribbling and trying to call plays and stuff … That ain’t your game! You better renegotiate your contract!”

I told Pavlovic, “You should have did what Varejao did. You should have stayed out some more time because you are not doing it right now!”

That was my first game back on the bench. I had to help my team out. You know, I can’t play but I can talk that trash. It was fun being back on that bench because it gets my competitive mode back. Since I can’t go out there and do the work, I got to just talk it for my team.

I was making fun of, what’s his nickname, Boobie? I told Gibson, “Hey, it’s hard to shoot open shots when LeBron’s not on the floor! You ain’t going to get open shots no more. Not with Shannon Brown as the other wing. Nah, ain’t nobody going to be double teaming him!”

… Shannon Brown, you know, he hit a couple shots and then looked my way.

But, it’s fun being back on the bench now.

I was looking spiffy yesterday. I got to pull out all the clothes now. I was looking nice from my shoulders down because I didn’t do anything with my hair and my beard. I was looking like a lumberjack because of the snow. The snows coming and I got to get as much wool on my face as possible. By the way, crutches and snow do not go well together. I fell two times the other day in the snow trying to get to the car with my crutches. (Don’t tell the doctor that.)

LeBron was wearing a pinstripe Italian cut. It looked like he was going to choke over there with the tight fit. I talked to him after the game and I was just asking him when he’ll be coming back and he said as soon as his hand feels better.

My Health
Good news. Good news. Good news. I had the specialist come in and they said I’m actually ahead of schedule. I know I’ve said this one before, but they said I’m ahead of schedule and they’re going to start putting me on the bike, but for now my scheduled time to come back is still going to be the same. They said my VMO is stronger than it’s supposed to be, especially for somebody who had surgery two weeks ago. Your VMO muscle is right above your knee, it’s like your quad muscle.

And then the swelling is down to where it hasn’t been since before the first injury. I’m still not taking the pills. I had to fight it. I didn’t want pain in my knee and my stomach.

I’ve been to the practice facility for the last four or five days. You know me, I’m just there talking trash. It keeps you in an upbeat spirit, that’s part of rehab too.

My Cartoon
Oh my God, there are some funny voices out there. Oh man, you guys got some funny voices. Truthfully, it is so hard to pick these voices because there are some funny, funny people out there. Raw talent. I like that.

Nick Young Plays Like Kobe
He’s only ranked 10th in the Rookie Rankings? He’s 10th only because he hasn’t been playing as much. If he was playing like some of the minutes them big boys is playing, he’d be up there. He scores too easy. I don’t know why I’m giving this man his hype, but I’ve seen a lot of kids, I watch a lot of basketball and he scores easy.

When he did it in college, I just thought it was hype because he was a guard playing forward and they needed him to try to outscore people. They put their shooting guard at power forward so power forwards would stick him and he could get easy shots.

No, but really, the kid is going to be a talent in this league. Mark my words, he scores too easy. I actually argue with my dad about this. My dad like Jordan Farmar and I tell him, if you have to compare him to a guard, take any two guard in the league … Now I’m not saying he’s going to be them, but I’m just saying if you had to compare his ability to Kobe, Vince, Tracy, Ray Allen … I say he has more of a Kobe skill than any other of those players because of the way he moves through the lane, his dunking ability, his shooting ability, the way he shoots, the way he posts up … it’s all a Kobe type of a game. He has more natural skills and raw talent. But he doesn’t have the Kobe mentality. I can’t help him get it, that’s something you got to have.

I’m going to help him out as much as I can, but like I told him, you’re supposed to pass the torch off to the younger player, but he’s already 22! I can’t pass the torch to somebody I’m only three years older than! I might as well pass it back to myself.

I told him when I was 22, I was in my first All-Star game – the REAL one. I was averaging 25.5 points in the NBA and I was at the All-Star game.

Have you seen how silly him and Dominic are in their Vlog? It’s funny though. They have no clue about nothing. They are like college kids. I look at it just to laugh. It’ just so funny.

This and That
I just had a little autograph session with Topps. That took up some time. I had to do about 2,000 straight up “Gilbert Arenas #0.” I might have to make a deal with them to do something different with them next year, with special autographs and new stuff next year.

I’m working on my pool. I got to show you all a picture of this. The guy who made Hugh Hefner’s pool is doing my pool. I got to show you guys a model. This is nice. I’ll try to get a picture of it soon for the blog.

GilIIZero’s Update
I have some shoes coming out. The Agent Zero came out the other day, Vote for Gilbert comes out today and NBA LIVE 08 comes out December 13. Somebody was killing it, but they don’t know what swagger is.

Don’t Forget to Vote
Keep voting for me. I’ll be ready for All-Star weekend. I’m going to pull a Penny Hardaway or a Vince Carter four years ago when they didn’t play one game and still played the All-Star game.

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

The Cust0mize come with a dry erase marker so you can write messages like “Don’t watch me, watch TV,” on them. Images courtesy of adidas

The biggest thing I’m focusing on now are the adidas GilIIZeros. I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to promote them when I’m not playing. I know everybody has seen GilTV. People have been laughing, saying that it’s funny and that’s what it was supposed to be – funny, little commercials that had no acting skills involved. It was just a spur of the moment thing to play around and see what happens.

The problem in having one of my teammates or somebody else debut them on the court is that no one wears low tops. That’s the hard part. But, most of the color ways come out in February and I’ll probably be coming back then. Or, I’ll at least be training and working out in the gym then and I’ll be traveling again. So, we might not have a problem. It’s just these shoes that we have coming out in December and January that we need to figure out.

Spalding Winners
I read the essays for Spalding and I cut the top five down to the top three. The winners of the rims and the Spalding court, and all that, are:

1. Erick Rose
2. James Fowler
3. Nick Kendall

They’ll be getting a call soon and we’ll be taking pictures together when they get their prizes.

Fighting Through the Pain
I’m starting to feel a lot better now. There’s no more pain. The Friday after the surgery was just torture because my manhood wouldn’t let me take the pills. I wanted to do it without the pills because I didn’t want the pills to take away the pain and when I say it kicked my butt … Oh my God, it was like House of Pain. Oh man, I couldn’t twitch a muscle without being hurt.

I had to open up all the windows for it to get cold because I was so hot and just sweating. I didn’t fall asleep until probably 6:00 a.m., but the pain kicked in at 9:00 p.m. so I was struggling all the way until then.

I couldn’t go to sleep. I was just tossing and turning in pain.

The pain actually started at about 5:00 p.m. That’s when I kicked Nick Young out of the house. I was like, “Man, you’re bringing the pain on.” He was trying to tell jokes, but I was like, “You’re bringing the pain, you’re bringing the pain. Get out of here.”

At 9 o’clock is when it kicked in full throttle and I was up until 6:00. I couldn’t do nothing. Couldn’t eat. Couldn’t drink. I was just in agony throwing pillows and trying to readjust pillows. I walked the house at least five times on crutches trying to find somewhere that was comfortable.

I called the trainer at midnight and told him he better come over and massage my knee. That didn’t help at all. Of course it didn’t help.

I didn’t take the pills for two reasons:

1. I’m against pills in general. I think it’s a coward’s way to deal with pain. You take some pills, then the pills get you sleepy.
2. The main reason is though that it blocked my stomach up last time and I couldn’t use the restroom. I couldn’t use the restroom for like five days, and I didn’t want to go through that pain again.

I had pain in my stomach and pain in my knee, so I thought that this time I’d just take it like a soldier.

But now? Whoo! It’s getting better, I’m happy.

Revisiting the Injury
When I first decided to sit out, it was because I was feeling discomfort in my knee and starting to feel pain. It was the first time I felt pain since training camp. I mean, I felt pain in training camp, but it was pain where I was so excited to play that it really didn’t matter.

I started feeling pain again, and I said to myself, “I’m just going to sit out and rest for a month.” You know, just give my knee a month just to rest and get me strength up and work on my strength. As long as the team didn’t go on an 0-3, or 0-4 losing stint, I was going to sit out.

As long as they were winning and managing without me, I was going to sit.

Then when they went on the road, I was going to go on the road just in case I wanted to play in Charlotte. Before the trip I was like, let me sit here and get another MRI, just in case. And the MRI showed that I actually did something to my knee in the past week since my last MRI.

Passing the Time
I’ve been watching my Jack Bauer 24 DVDs. I’m watching Season Five.

I really do understand about all the commentors telling me that I ruined their fantasy basketball team. I’m very sorry, but that’s what fantasy basketball is all about. It happens. When I’m healthy, pick me back up, please. Don’t trade me for somebody like Jamario Moon or somebody else who’s on the rise. You can borrow Jamario for now, but don’t trade me for him.

I do want to thank everybody for the messages I’ve been getting on the blog telling me to cheer up. One of the guys on Comcast did a little song after the Warriors game which was funny. Thank you.

I’ve had a lot of things to fill my time, not just video games. I’ve been working on the Gazo cartoon. Trying to analyze some of these voices.

Watching My Team
They’re playing up and down right now, but mostly up.

I thought they let the Memphis game get away from them. The Golden State game … Baron Davis just played a great game. Even though Caron played a great game, Baron controlled the game. When you have him controlling the game, it’s hard to win. Everybody seen it in the playoffs last year.

While we’re talking about Golden State, I don’t know if anybody found out but I want to give my condolences to Matt Barnes and his family. He just lost his mother due to cancer. So, rest in peace Ms. Barnes.

Then we go down to Memphis and they got that kid Navarro. Him and Lowry, they kicked our butts. We probably looked at them and took it lightly. Those are the games we need. I knew we were going to go out and play a great game against Dallas. Those are the games you get up for, your Mavericks, your Suns, your Spurs … but we need to take every team just as serious.

Nick Young had three straight buckets against Dallas and the next shot he missed, Andray Blatche tapped it in. From there, Caron and Antawn just hit big shots over and over.

Andray’s been playing great basketball. I know when they signed him this summer people were questioning whether it was a great move, they were saying, “Did they give this kid too much money?” And I’m thinking, “Man, if you guys see what I see, he is underpaid by a lot!” He’s going to prove it year after year. You can see right now that he’s worth the money he’s getting.

Don’t Panic, Wizards Fans
So I had this interview with John Mitchell. I’m sure his original story wasn’t going to go that way. Knowing John, I know his original story started off, “Is that the last time we’ll see Gilbert Arenas on the basketball court – the 30 and 11 -- as a Wizard?” (Just in case I don’t come back this year.) I know that’s what his angle was.

But I’ve been saying for the longest, I want my jersey retired here, but if something happens this summer where we somehow rebuild because we lose players …

We lost Etan due to his heart right now … We don’t know if he’s going to come back. Antawn’s a free agent … We don’t know if he’s going to come back. Right there, that’s two key pieces to your success. You lose both of those players and you don’t bring anybody else in on that level or better than them, and we have a problem.

Is Varejao Playing Yet?
Anderson, I got to know him when me and him were under Dan Fegan. You never want to say something bad about someone you know, and I don’t want to jeopardize his future earnings, but as a player, if he was on my team and holding out, we would have a big problem with each other.

I think negotiations should finish in the summer. If you’re negotiating while we’re playing, then it’s not about team anymore. That’s just my personal opinion. I know he has to look out for himself, but if I was LeBron, we’d be having problems right now. It’s damn near 20 games into the season and you’re still chilling in Brazil, huh? I’m out there facing double teams and you’re still chilling on the beach? OK …

But really, good luck to him and I do understand. I’ve been a free agent before. I know how it can go up and down. I know sometimes people get left out, but I’ve never seen somebody hold out this long. I mean, the last time someone held out this long it was Sprewell when he turned down that $21 million and he ain’t seen one dollar since. I think he’s still holding out and saying he can’t feed his family.

R.I.P., Sean Taylor
Sean Taylor … oh man, that is a tragic story. You know, I didn’t really know him personally. The only football players I see is when they come into the arena. So, I don’t know him personally, but I know his number, so I know he’s a popular player here in D.C.

With me, what I hate about the whole thing is that there’s people out there in the world who I call losers because they wait for somebody else to get big and get famous and then they come and try to take from them because they’re too lazy to actually work themselves.

That just hurts my heart to see people like him, sleeping with his family and someone decides to come into his house to get a couple dollars when he could be out on the corner begging for money to get those dollars. You know, those quarters add up. Add those quarters up from a couple hours a day and you’ll be good, bums do it all the time. It’s a good living. There’s bums that I give $5 or $20 to a day. If you hit the right corner … BOOM … you’ll be living like Taylor in a couple years.

But if you decide to go into somebody’s house armed to take a couple dollars … I mean, who keeps money in their house? I’m not a scientist or a genius, but I know if you come into my house you aren’t going to get nothing. You might get some pocket change, but the big money, that’s what the banks are for.

So you come into somebody’s house and then you shoot him, that is … I don’t even know what to say. Jesus Christ! Give me a break here. Is that what a good life is about now? You look for somebody who’s rich and then you rob him?

What happened to drug dealers robbing drug dealers? That just doesn’t happen anymore? I’ve seen the movie American Gangster and they didn’t go bothering no rich people.

I don’t understand it. That’s like the new thing now, going into athletes’ houses and just robbing them. It happened to Eddy Curry, Antoine Walker and then they tried to get Flip Murray too. It’s like, man, is that what they do? Just scout out athletes houses and then strike?

Then a player dies in a tragedy like this and if it was on the other hand he was at a club and it happened everybody would be like, “Why was he in a club?” But you can’t even be in your house anymore without finding trouble.

Man, I’m going to have to leave some tickets for Bush to a Wizards game so he can have his secret service set up outside my house. This is ridiculous.

Rest in peace, Sean Taylor. I hope the D.C. area and the Redskins fans can get over this. I know he had a little daughter and it’s going to be real hard for her right now.

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

I’ll be helping out the young guys stay motivated for a little while. Ned Dishman/NBAE/Getty Images

I just got bad news.

I guess after I got my second MRI and I was cleared to go full speed, I finally went full speed and ended up tearing cartilage. I had to get surgery and I ended up with a meniscus tear and a microfracture on my non weight-bearing part of the bone in my left knee.

It’s not the more serious microfracture that some guys get. If I would have had that kind, I would have been out 12 months. This one is just three months.

I can’t rehab it yet, I’m sitting out for about a month. It’s not as bad as the injury in April, but it’s tough.

It’s kind of bad because there is a whole bunch of teams out there that I wanted to kick their …

They needed to clear some cartilage out because there were some tears that happened after I barbequed the Timberwolves and Indiana because I was going too, too hard.

It turned out to be worse than I thought.

I found it out just now. I just sat out yesterday’s game because after the Timberwolves game, I went home and all of the sudden it just started hurting.

I didn’t go to Charlotte because I went to get another MRI to make sure nothing happened in those last two games and the MRI showed the tear.

It’s bad when you miss the end of last season and the playoffs and you do the best you can to rehab and get stronger during the summer and then you come back and it’s a bumpy ride.

I’m just going to sit in my sorrows again. I have three months to back positive again, but right now, it’s hard.

I need to start thinking about longevity in my career instead of just this injury right now. Every great player has missed at least one year.

I’m not going to go backwards in my mood, because we’ve still won five in a row. This is the way we were supposed to have started off. The group is positive, so the leader has to stay positive. Nick Young, you’re seeing how fast he can score. You know how our future looks with our young guys. They’re doing pretty good, so you have to stay positive and keep upbeat around them.

I’m going to go in and do my rehab and take my time this time.

They put me out for the surgery. You have to put me out for anything. I can’t even get my tooth pulled – or even cleaned – without putting myself to sleep. I don’t want no pain.

I’m going to watch the game when I come to. I call Jackie Miles and Drew Cleary and tell them what I want the team to do. I’ll be calling up plays like, “Oh, you should be doing this play!” I don’t think it ever works, because I’ve never seen it happen where I call and then have the play happen. But, it is refreshing just to call someone.

Even before this MRI result came through, I was going to take at least a month just to rehab the right way. I was going to play it game by game. As long as we were winning on that winning streak, I was going to sit out.

I’ll go to the arena on Friday. But I’ll get there late. We’re all superstitious around the team and Antonio Daniels says that he plays better when I don’t come onto the bench before halftime. We have all these little rules. He’s like, “You can’t come out until there’s six minutes left in the second period, or after halftime. You have to see how the game is going and then decide.”

I’m like, “OK, alright, whatever you say.”

For the road trip, I’ll probably stick around D.C. and rehab, unless it’s a long one and I’ll go just to get out of the house. I don’t know.

I’m going to stay positive this time, because feeling sorry for myself didn’t work last time. It just kind of hurt that everything I did this summer really meant nothing, to the point where I’m rehabbing again. I guess I was doing too much. I wasn’t giving myself enough time to let my muscles heal. Running bleachers, riding bikes and doing all that stuff was just a little too much.

You know what? When stuff goes bad it goes bad. I just broke up with my girlfriend and I don’t get to see my kids for a while because of the breakup.

That happened right before those two games last week. I was so happy, went out and performed well with 30 and 11 and came back the next night with 28 and I was thinking, “Oh yeah, it was her that was bringing my spirits down…”

Now she’s back in California. You ask for space, you know, because everything feels closed in … the house is dirty, the kids are drawing on the walls and on the couches and you’re thinking, “Oh man, I can’t do this. I’m not playing well and I’m coming home to all this.”

So you ask for space and now you got clean walls, clean furniture and you’re lonely.

And now you got to sit out three months. Oh man. I guess it has to get bad so it can get good.

I’m not talking to my girlfriend. There’s a thing, “Watch what you say,” sometimes. She said, “I don’t want you to call me. I don’t want you to ask me about the kids. We’re going to do this on our own.”

So, I decided, “OK.”

Some things, if you don’t mean them, don’t say them.

Now she’s mad that I’m not returning her calls. I guess she’s mad actually, I don’t know. Me and her brother are very cool so he goes, “Why don’t you just talk to her?”

“Well, she just told me last week not to call her.”

She told me I needed to start paying attention and listening from now on, now I’m paying attention and listening.

GilIIZeros Coming at You
If everybody goes to GilTV, you’re going to see my Denzel skills.

You know what? The commercials were a spur of the moment type of a deal. We just finished shooting our Brotherhood commercial that’s showing right now, and I’m the only one who has a different shoe from those guys.

So we had to do something different and one of the guys who wrote the script – wait a second, one of the guys whose idea it was, because there was no script – said, “What do you think of doing some little, funny commercials that will go online?”

I said, “Yeah, OK, no problem!”

The next day, they’re telling me I’m going to do some promo stuff for the shoe and they’re like, “We have the commercials ready that you need to do.”

I was like, “Huh?”

At first, I went cold turkey and chickened out.

They were like, “Yeah, this is the best. You just improv!”

I was like, “Hey, I’m funny around people. Not in-front-of-the-camera funny, when there’s not script or nothing.”

We started doing the Gil’s Island one. That was the very first one. It just looked so dumb because I was so nervous at first. So Zach from adidas dressed up like the lobster. I convinced him to be the lobster and we just did it to try to get me in my element. He was just doing it just to play around, but for some reason they thought it would be funny to have him in every episode.

The second one was the Black President one. I just wanted to make fun of, you know, Congress, Bush and how they do their little speeches. I got that one from the Dave Chappelle skit when he was supposed to be a black president.

The third one was Agent Zero, one of me getting interviewed by the lobster.

The fourth one was Cookin’ With Gil. That’s for the Hibachi shoe. It also has the chicken in it, and that’s the trainer for the Wizards, Drew Cleary.

They helped me out and we had a lot of fun with it. There was no script, we were just winging it. We thought it was cool to put it online and put it on YouTube and have it be funny and something different to have with my shoe launch instead of some boring old commercial that nobody really sees. You see more stuff online then you do on TV now, so we tried to attack that way.

Got to shout out to Wizznutzz for making the Nacho Cero shoe. I might have collab with them and have like a 100 special NACHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! shoes made.

My Girl Power
I know everybody has been hearing about my Girl Power group. If you didn’t know, I have a group of women that follow me around the world wearing shirts that say “Operation Gilbert Arenas.” Oh man, that’s when you know you’ve made it. Our security guard, Jackie Miles, told me. He was like, “Yeah, you know, we have these ladies out here with the best shirts in the world. They’ve been following you from city to city just trying to get you to notice them.”

They had on these shirts with “Operation Gilbert Arenas” on them with little diamonds and everything. It was kind of funny. I guess they already had one lady picked out to get the jersey and everything, so I gave it to her.

I don’t think any other athletes have “Operation” anything.

Thanksgiving Plans
I already ate my Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving is the most confusing holiday because it doesn’t have an actual date. It’s just a Thursday. It’s “this” Thursday, “the last” Thursday, “the third” Thursday … so I was like, “Since we don’t really have a date, I should be able to eat anytime during November.” So I had mine last Saturday.

I ate with Nick Young, his girlfriend and his brother and Dominic McGuire and his little brother. We had Thanksgiving dinner at my house. Willie the Chef came out from Jersey and cooked for us. He was like, “Why are you eating Thanksgiving today?” I was like, “Because I can!” It’s not like Christmas and Valentine’s Day where you know there’s an actual date. You can wing it on Thanksgiving.

I’ve already had my Thanksgiving, so tomorrow is just a regular day for me. I might just sit and watch American Gangster for the 14th time and just sit around and eat some leftover turkey sandwiches.

Actually, if you guys remember the challenge I did around September about writing the essays to get the free Spalding court, I’m down to my five finalists. I’m going to re-read over those while I have this time and I’m going to start doing the voices for Gazo. I’m going to listen to those right now.

All-Star Hope
If I’m missing all these months, I know these coaches aren’t going to pick me this time. When you averaged 29 and played every game and they didn’t pick you then, I’m damn sure they’re not going to pick me now. I need my fans to vote me. They need to help me out. We deserve more than what we’re getting right now.

Alrighty, y’all have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

Serving chips and dip. Ned Dishman/NBAE/Getty Images

When you think about it, as bad as I’ve started off, I’m still better than 97 percent of the players that are playing right now.

I think I got a new name. It’s still Agent Zero, but instead of Agent Zero with the Hibachi as an arm, it’s Agent Zero having Nacho as an arm because I’m serving chips and dip.

I remember last year I didn’t have a rhythm until I came up with Hibachi in New York and just the other night, right before the game I came up with:

NACHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Serving chips and dip.

You know, like Nacho Libre? Yeah, so every time I’m shooting it, it’s just:

NACHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Serving chips and dip.

The Pacers defenders were looking at me silly, but I had everybody on the bench yelling “Nacho!” too.

I had 30 points, 11 assists and six rebounds. I was four away from serving a chips and triple-dip. Brendan and Antawn were killing that rebound game, so it’s hard for me.

This is the NBA. Dallas proved last year that it’s not about how you play when you start … or finish. It’s about how you finish when it counts and your team catches its rhythm. You could win all 82 games, but if you aren’t clicking at the right time it really doesn’t mean anything.

Right now we really just need to stay focused and go out there and play. We started off real slow, slower than we expected, but now we have a rhythm. Nacho is on the scene now. We have new blood. NACHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! is on the scene, so we’re just ready.

My Knee
I got the second opinion on my knee like Jason Kidd told me to and it came back clean. All that was in there was just swelling and a little fluid, everything else came back clear. Ever since then, my knee’s actually been getting better. The swelling and the fluid is getting pushed out on its own. I was just trying to hurry up and get it out of there so I could play comfortable and that’s why I had the fluid drained, but it’s been draining itself for the last week and a half.

Mentally it was a big relief because now I know it’s healthy and I don’t have to think about it getting hurt or think about the negativity behind it.

All-Star Voting Has Begun
Is Vince Carter a forward or a guard on the ballot? He’s still a guard? Man.

I guess All-Star voting started early this year. All the zero-to-hero fans, I guess we need to get a jump on this All-Star thing. We don’t need to play comeback anymore. We’ve proven ourselves that we are legit in the online world.

The Agent Zero fans have proved that I don’t have to worry about my competition. My competition has to worry about me. I’m like Penny Hardaway back in the day. It’s nice to know that you can start off slow and still have your fans back you.

Being named a starter last year meant everything just because the fans are picking you and the fans appreciate what you do for them and they’re rewarding you by going out and taking their time to vote for you.

But, there’s nothing like the first time because you never know if it’s your last. I actually had the photo of all the All-Stars together from my first All-Star game painted like a portrait and made it bigger than poster size. I’m getting all the players to sign it. J.O. just signed it. Now all I need is Wade, me, myself and Paul Pierce. Those are the only people that’s left to sign it.

Clearing Another Thing Up
First it was SI.com, now it’s ESPN.com:

Reason No. 12,348 why I love the NBA: A Boston buddy of mine sat courtside for the Celts' opener and sent along the following e-mail: "We were sitting near the Wizards bench and heckling Arenas that he 'wasn't a good enough player to be a bad teammate' and that his teammates hated him and that he was a jerk for complaining about his teammates to his assistant coach (by the way he doesn't talk to the head coach, just some guy on the bench). So Arenas decides in the next timeout to come over, lean down and discuss my feelings with him. He tells me that his guys love him and that he's buying them all dinner that night. I told him that he should 'cause he's the star and he makes more money than them, and they have to deal with him and act like they like him or they'll be out of a job. He replied, 'I guess you're not getting my jersey tonight then.' I replied that I didn't want his jersey, but he could FedEx me one from the team he's playing for after the All-Star Break. He walked out and missed two free throws, then looked right at me as he ran down the floor and was shaking his head."

First of all, so the fan’s saying that I missed those two free throws because of him? Wowwwww. That is a great fan. That’s like that commercial with Yao Ming. Remember that commercial where the kid had the hat on and he moved it to the side and made Yao miss his free throws to the side?

Now that’s a fan. He really thought he dictated my free throws by talking trash.

No, it wasn’t the 20,000 people yelling, “Gilbert! Gilbert!” or booing. It was him: the one person by the bench. That one person distracted me. Not the 20,000 people screaming their lungs out. It was just that one guy.

He was funny. He really wanted my jersey, I just wasn’t giving it to him.

But really, he was funny. That’s why I like fans like that; they give you a chance to interact with them. He was like, “Yeah, your teammates don’t like you. They don’t like playing with you.”

Now the other part, that’s what I don’t understand. Why do media gobble up anything anybody says? Me and my coach have a great relationship. He actually called my dad the other day and told my dad, “Try to convince your son to get rest and rest his knee.”

Me and Coach Jordan have a great relationship.

Just watch any player during the game with any team. Your head coaches are so into the game sometimes that the only people you can talk to are the assistants to relay some of the messages.

You can’t just every time something goes wrong or something goes right go straight to the head coach during the timeouts. When I’m on the sideline, sure, I’ll talk to an assistant coach, but every player does that.

That’s pretty silly for somebody to publish that after the fan just e-mailed it.

Gazo Auditions
For the voices, everybody keep going to Gazo the Pranksta. We have over 200 or so auditions right now. There’s some funny stuff.

For all the fans who sent in their voices just wanting to say “Hi”; “Hi” back.

Some people just wanted to say “Hi,” so here’s your “Hi” back.

We’re still looking. Finding the right voices is a process that you don’t want to rush. This is something that I’m going to take my time doing. This is not something that I want to rush. I want to listen to the voices over and over and do it the right way. This is a longevity project.

DeShawn’s Beard Contest
I remember DeShawn told me about this. He was like he’s not cutting his beard, him and Drew Gooden was having a contest going on, whoever cuts it first loses.

I told him, “How are you going to beat a guy that had a ducktail last year? He wore an actual ducktail last year. How do you beat a guy like that? That is a pointless bet. You’re going up against somebody who doesn’t care about his appearance.”

I guess DeShawn says he’s going to win because he has a bet going on, but I think it’s hard to beat a guy who doesn’t care about his appearance.

Isn’t Drew Gooden the same guy who pulled out the “Make It Rain” dance on the basketball court? Drew Gooden, my man 100 grand and all. You’re 6-10, you can’t be doing “Make it Rain” clear it out with a soda on the side.

GilIIZeros Time
The adidas GilIIZeros are launching on November 23rd in stores. These are not the fine colors. These ones you won’t get fined for wearing. Look for them in stores nationwide at Foot Action and Finish Line.

Cop these on November 23rd. Ned Dishman/NBAE/Getty Images

There will be the white ones that I wore against Indiana and I’ll be wearing for the next couple games. It has my face on them that I drew in the commercial last year. All the kids can draw on it and then erase what they wrote so they can write a different message for every game they play.

Then they’re also coming out with an all white and blue ones, then the black and gold ones you all saw on my blog and then I think there’s a white, blue and black for our jerseys. Those are the four that are going to be released first and then the Agent Zero all black with a little bit of white are coming out in Cleveland and then in Phoenix the “Vote for Gilbert” All-Star shoe edition will be released.

We might have Gil 21s now because Lil’ Wayne is coming out to New Orleans during All-Star Weekend and he wants to collab with me for a shoe, so Lil’ Wayne is getting involved in my GilIIZeros now. We just have to work out the fine print. It’s going to be an All-Star limited edition, only for New Orleans.

Thoughts on Starbury
Back to the Stephon Marbury laughter again, huh? I think everyone loves laughing right now. It’s comedy to me. It’s not like, “Uh oh, here come the Knicks again…” It’s just laughter to me.

The part that I’m laughing at is that the part that he was on the flight to Phoenix, left and went all the way back to New York and then showed up in L.A. I know you got fined $200,000 so that is an expensive trip. What’d you go home just to take a nap? For $200,000, I say you suck it up and go take a nap at your hotel in Phoenix. I’m not going to take a fine like that to go home and sleep in my own bed.

Everybody knows this is going to be an on-going situation. This is the same guy that was screaming “We got Zach Randolph y’all!”

It’s just funny to me. I don’t mean to pick at the man, but it’s funny to me.

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

J-Kidd won this battle, but I’ll be back. David Dow/NBAE/Getty Images

We started the game off well. We came out aggressive, we came out fast and we were hitting shots. In the second period they threw in that zone and that kind of stumped us a little bit. But we still fought back, hit shots and went into halftime with a six-point lead.

Coming out of halftime, we tried to do the same thing and we ended up tied after the third quarter. From there it was a back-and-forth game and then that rebound at the end killed us.

We fell down six in the fourth due to free throws and we fought back and it came down to that last possession when Richard got the offensive rebound and got two free throws from it.

Coming out of the timeout I wanted to go towards the right side because Antoine Wright was up playing me for the shot, so I figured if I could have him backing up I could go for the winner. But Vince did a great job staying on my right side with the help and forcing me baseline and I had to throw up a one-legger.

There was so much going on that calling timeout when the double came didn’t cross my mind. I was just trying to focus on the shot over everything else.

A Lot of Talking with RJ
Actually, we were talking about my knee. He was telling me I need to get a second opinion because I shouldn’t be getting it drained this early on in the season. It was the same thing that me and Jason Kidd talked about after the game on the court. He said that I should get a second opinion and I shouldn’t be playing so many minutes early. He said that it’s the same thing that some of these players come back from. He had microfracture surgery, so he knows. His injury was worse than mine so he knows you have to take your time coming back.

I Won the 2007 Weblog Award: Best Celebrity Blogger
Oh yeah! We beat out Voltron and that crew!

That’s amazing that you can beat out 30 years of Star Trek followers in two days. They should be ashamed of themselves.

The fans are 2-0 in buzzer beaters for me. We beat out Vince and then we beat out Wheaton, Wheaton the Voltron.

Wheaton fell apart in the competition worse than Britney Spears’ career has.

The other people didn’t have a chance. No one was close. Kanye ... 500 votes? Yeah, I got 10,000. You can’t tell me nothing.

Those people didn’t know how strong my followers were.

Wizards vs. Nuggets on ESPN
We play Denver tonight with Melo and A.I.

A.I. hasn’t been in our building in damn near two and a half years so it’s going to be great to play against that combo. We haven’t faced them yet. They’re a powerhouse in the West and they’re not playing as well as they should be, but it’s the beginning of the season and we’re not playing as well as we should be either.

This is my second time trying the back-to-back thing on my knee and we’ll see how it feels.

Taking Care of Business
Go to Spalding's Web Site. They re-did it and it's all me now.

And don't forget, Gazo auditions are tomorrow.

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

My shirt says it all. Brett Stirton/NBAE/Getty Images

I'm Nominated for Best Celebrity Blogger
You usually have to have a speech after you win an award, but since I might win (I mean, if anybody is paying attention to the rest of those blogs, they know the Hibachi is superior) I’ll blog about being nominated.

Look at my competition. John Mayer? Who is he? Then you have Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump and that’s not fair because Donald talks about Rosie and Rosie talks about Donald. Ross Matthews … yeah, don’t know him. Kanye West … Kanye has a blog?

The leader is Wil Wheaton from Star Trek: The Next Generation. No wonder why he’s winning, do you know how many Star Trek fans there are? They’re all sitting online in their parents’ house with their long hair and they’re sitting there voting for someone that nobody has heard of besides them.

But I know who should win … the one and only.

I’ve been blogging for over a year now. I had my year anniversary and I’m already in the top five. That’s called amazing.

Wheaton is killing me. He has like 50 percent of the votes and I have like four percent. That is a disgrace. My NBA fans, we got to kick it in now. You’re talking about the integrity of basketball fans now when you let Star Trek people win. We can’t let Star Trek people win and we can’t let Donald O’Donnell win – they should be together.

Fans, we beat Vince Carter out last season for All-Star votes, now we need to beat Mr. Star Trek and his little friends out for this Weblog Award.

We’ll definitely rally to a strong No. 2 finish, but we can slide in to No. 1 if we’re all on the same page.

Vote here!

My Knee
If y’all seen my performance against Orlando, you know why I have to get my knee drained before our game in New Jersey. My knee is stiff right now. It gets stiff when the weather changes. We had that back-to-back with Boston and Orlando and it was my first back-to-back since the injury. I have to get my knee drained and get the fluid out so I can be ready for the next 15 days. I guess it’s like a 15-day period after I drain my knee that I’m at 100 percent. There’s no pain, it’s just stiffness.

Don't Put Me on Waivers
Have you seen my stats? For all my fantasy owners, do not give up on me yet. I know my three-point percentage is horrific right now – 1-for-17 – but I think the rims are broken around the league. David Stern, you need to look into fixing these arenas. But really, 1-for-17, I’m shooting worse than … I don’t know who to say without pissing somebody off. I’m just shooting really bad right now, but I’ll get the mojo back in a minute.

Odds and Ends
The Wizards organization wanted me to throw this in because my blog is so popular. Go to the Wizards Store Website and our dance team did a calendar for the first time, like Miami does. Pick yourself up a dance team calendar because all proceeds go to the Zer0 2 Her0 Foundation.

And remember, Gazo voices on November 10.

Posted by: Gilbert Arenas

Boston held me to 5-for-20 shooting. Elsa/NBAE/Getty Images

The only reason I'm blogging is because one of the fans said to me while we were losing losing to Boston of Friday night, "Since you're getting your butt kicked by 20, you should blog about it."

So here I am.

Let's be honest: I've never seen anything like that before. It caught us off guard. We were so hyped coming into the locker room and then when you go on that floor … whoo!

Right now it is great to be a Boston fan. You have the Patriots, you have Boston College, you have the Celtics, you have the Boston Red Sox who just won a championship. Right now it's great to be a Boston fan and I think it's the most excited the city has been for a long time. And it showed on Friday.

The whole atmosphere was unbelievable.

The Celtics did a great job. They made shots and KG performed – 22 and 20, you can't complain about that – plus Paul Pierce is going to do what Paul Pierce does and Ray Allen is going to hit open shots and make plays. Right now, by first glance, their continuity is there. That was the thing that people were worried about and what I was trying to bank on. You know they're going to be a good team, but I was trying to bank on that hopefully they wouldn't have their chemistry …

… Oh, they had it!

They had it and I had to eat my words on national television. 0-1 on predictions is not the way you want to start out the season, especially me with my mouth.

But I did have two fans sitting on the front row wearing No. 0. They sat right next to the bench. They were two really good fans.

I've been going to Boston for many years now and I've never seen anything like that. I know most of you were watching it on TV, but if you were there you could hear them just chanting my name which was beautiful because I don't think even Michael Jordan got his name chanted in another arena like that.

Even though mine was chanted for hatred, it felt good. Now there's a bond between me and the Boston fans.

What Went Wrong

We were 0-for-16 from the 3-point line. When we broke down the play-by-play, the first period we were down three points, the third period we were up one and the fourth period we were up two. So it's a tie game if you take away that second period when they took their starters out and we took our starters out and you had Paul Pierce still in and he just went to work on us. They went on like a quick 12-0 run within two minutes and we could never get that back. Other than that, it was tied through the first, third and fourth periods.

That second period is when you think they're taking their stars out and you're going to take advantage and we had to take our starters out to get some rest too. That lone wolf, Paul Pierce, has been doing it for many years by himself and he showed he still can.

Early Season Struggles

You got to win. We know this was going to be a difficult task with the teams we were playing early. We just have to focus. We play better from behind. In all the years I've been here, we play better as a team coming up from behind.

It's the NBA. Some teams are going to win and some teams that are supposed to win are going to lose. It's early. Some teams are going to dominate once they get their rhythm 20 games into the season. Dallas, who won 67 games, started off the season 0-4 last year. The beginning of the season is messy. You just have to feel it out and make sure your chemistry gets together.

I know a couple of people were concerned about how I was going to perform because I didn't play too much in the preseason and didn't really show any signs of explosiveness. The thing you fear is that you work out so hard in the summer to rehab and then come in to preseason or training camp and get hurt again and you never get to touch that NBA floor. That was my biggest concern so that's why I kind of played possum when I played in the preseason, used it to get in shape and be careful of what I did.

Allow Me to Clarify

I didn't realize when you do interviews for articles and stuff and when people read it, especially articles with me, they're ready to nitpick. I didn't know you have to talk in interviews like you're talking to idiots and explain every little detail. I didn't realize that.

The biggest things that stood out to people about my interview with SI.com:

"I've been doing it my whole career -- when I had Larry [Hughes], who averaged 22 points in 2004-05 alongside Jamison's 19.6); Antawn, Caron," Arenas said. "I don't see Dwyane [Wade] doing that. I don't see Kobe doing that. I didn't see AI doing that. I don't see LeBron [James] doing it -- there's not another scorer with him scoring 20."

Go back and look at the stat sheets from over the years and you'll see that what I was saying was really correct. You think that I was just a guy who took a lot of shots, but I've played team basketball with guys who have been big scorers. Look at the stats. It's right there.

"'D-Wade had Caron [with the Heat in 2003-04]. Kobe had Caron [with the Lakers in 2004-05]. I have Caron. What's the difference?'

Butler never averaged more than 15.5 points before he came to Washington."

I want to take that back because that's not fair to Dwyane because Caron was only in his second year. He didn't have a feel for the game like he has now. If he played with Dwyane now he'd be in the same boat. Maybe even better. Who knows.

"If you want to make everybody happy, you've got to get opportunities. You can't slow the ball up. I understand truthfully how Larry feels over there at Cleveland because, as athletic as they are, they slow the ball up so that if LeBron takes 25 shots and they only took 60 [as a team], it looks like he's dominating. But if you're running and he takes 25 shots and you got your 19 and somebody else got their 19, you don't know the difference."

This is the NBA. Everybody wants to be scorers. If you're supplying that demand and the only way you're supplying that demand is pushing that ball, you're feeding everybody's egos.

There are a lot of people who look better in certain systems because that's what type of player they are. People said, "You threw Larry under the bus." No, I didn't throw Larry under the bus, and this is why I want to clarify. I'm trying to tell you that you want to utilize him. You paid Larry money because Larry did something well: he scored. You can't have a guy who averaged 22 points one year and then go somewhere new and not get the same average and then you bash him. No, if you want him to be what he was, you need to change the tempo of your game. Besides Ilgauskas, you have runners. You have a team that wants to run. A team like Cleveland can run up and down and still bog down on defense. Their leader is one of the top athletes in the world. When we used to play them they always had us down 20 in the first period because they just ran and you couldn't stop them on the break.

That's why I mentioned when LeBron first got there when he had Ricky Davis and Darius Miles, they were just flying up and down. I know Mike Brown came in and tweaked the defense and stuff like that, but if you want to utilize what Larry Hughes is, you need to open the floor and let them run more. With that team, your defense isn't going to go anywhere. But you want to bring the tempo up. You keep hearing his name in trade rumors and fans going, "We want him out of here, he doesn't fit the system." Well, sometimes you have to change the system for your players. I know a lot of coaches say the players need to fit their systems, but sometimes you have to tweak the system a little too. It's a 50-50 thing.

"When I mentioned the trade requests of Kobe Bryant, with whom Arenas was linked in a recently rumored proposal that was instantly shot down by the Wizards, he shut his eyes and shook his head, tsk, tsk.

'I don't understand that,' Arenas said. 'I don't understand a player like him sometimes.'"

What I meant by understand him, I meant "understand greatness." It's easy for me to say, "Why do you want to leave?" For me looking at the situation as a fan, it's like, you're dominant. You're a dominant player. You wanted your own team. You wanted to be the man and carry your team to the Promised Land by yourself. You wanted to show the world you can do it. Now you've had three bad years. I shouldn't say that. Truthfully, I didn't consider them bad. For what you had, you brought a team that everybody had in last place to the playoffs in 2005-06 and that should have been your MVP. I counted him as my MVP because he took a team that everybody said wasn't going to make the playoffs and he took them to the playoffs and almost beat a great Suns team that had something like 55 wins that year.

That's why I say, I don't understand because as a player, you're going to go through years like that. In Boston, Paul Pierce said the other day, "I've been here for 10 years and some of them have been grueling, rebuilding years. Years you want to give it up. But I hung in there and look what I have now." I understand you want to get another ring but, come on. You are the Lakers. You are L.A. Why leave a city that everybody identifies you with just to go somewhere else. It's like what I was saying when Reggie Miller was talking about coming back. I don't want to see you come back and put on another uniform. Come on, you're a Pacer. Everyone can't win a championship. Not everyone is that blessed. You left this league and gave us memories. You did your job.

Sometimes I talk as a fan and I don't realize it sometimes when I attack things because I attack them like a fan. I attack them how I think a fan is saying instead of thinking as a player, "Uh oh, I might have to pay for this later."

"I told Arenas that I imagined at his best he could be like Isiah Thomas, who won two championships as a scoring point guard. He nodded in agreement and said, 'I'm much stronger and a better shooter than he was.'"

I was like, yeah, "I'm a little stronger and I can shoot the ball better so if I remind you of Isiah Thomas and he's a Hall of Famer, I'm on the right track." He's a legend. If I'm stronger and shoot the ball better and you're comparing me to him, I'm doing something good.

When people read my stuff now, they're ready for controversy. But sometimes I just like to have a conversation. I didn't know I had to explain everything afterwards.

Final Reminder

The voice auditions for Gazo the Pranksta are next weekend on Saturday, November 10th. November 10th. November 10th. November 10th.

Editor's Note: Gilbert's archived blog from the 2006-07 season can still be found at Agent Zero, The Blog File, but the new posts have moved to their new home in Fan Voice for this year, which is the page you're seeing now. Please feel free to comment on Gilbert's posts and check out the other blogs NBA.com has to offer in Fan Voice including The Court Reporters as well as player blogs from Morris Almond of the Jazz and Luol Deng of the Bulls.