Arenas, police to meet Monday about gun incident

Washington Wizards basketball star Gilbert Arenas is scheduled to meet Monday with law-enforcement authorities to present his side of the story about a locker-room dispute with a teammate nearly two weeks ago.

Not only does the District have some of the strictest handgun laws in the country, but federal authorities are investigating as well.

Yet even if Arenas’ legal headaches end there, he still could face a lengthy suspension from NBA commissioner David Stern and tempt the Wizards to invoke a morals clause in the standard NBA player contract and seek to void the remainder of a six-year, $111 million deal signed in 2008.

“I know Gilbert is a good guy,” Pacers guard T.J. Ford said. “I don’t think, like he said in his statement, that he was trying to hurt anybody.”

Probably not.

But Arenas has already tarnished his image as one of pro basketball’s more entertaining and eccentric personalities, and put the league on the spot. The NBA’s gun culture is no more prevalent than that of other leagues, nor the population in general, yet every time an athlete gets caught with a weapon, the publicity feeds the public notion that officials are incapable of policing their players.

That perception, in part, led to the NBA’s toughened antigun stance in the collective bargaining agreement, which bars league personnel from bringing weapons to league property, sites or charitable events.

Arenas has already admitted bringing three unloaded firearms to the Verizon Center — to get them out of the house and away from his kids — and storing them in a locked container. According to Yahoo! Sports, he took them out of the container before a Dec. 21 practice and laid the guns on a chair, then told teammate Javaris Crittenton to choose one and make good on a threat that stemmed from a card game on a late-night flight from Phoenix back to Washington two days earlier.

As the game got more expensive, Crittenton joked about what could happen to people who didn’t honor their debts. Arenas has a well-deserved reputation as a prankster and laying out the guns apparently was his way of trying to diffuse any lingering tension between the two.

Instead, the gesture enraged Crittenton. According to a New York Post report, Arenas and Crittenton wound up drawing guns on each other.

“I can’t speak on that,” Arenas said Saturday. “But if you know me, you’ve been here, I’ve never did anything (involving) violence. Anything I do is funny — well, it’s funny to me.”

Asked if the accounts of what happened have been blown out of proportion, Arenas laughed and said: “A little.”

His standing with the Wizards was already shaky. Arenas missed almost two seasons because of knee surgery, and his problems with former coach Eddie Jordan have only exacerbated under new coach Flip Saunders. Arenas’ production barely justified his selfishness in seasons past, but he hardly resembles the scorer he was then.

Teammates who tolerated Arenas once now find him frustrating.

His defenders say the needling, as well as the need to laugh everything off, is Arenas’ way of coping — with insecurity, a tough childhood and being overlooked at the start of both his college and pro careers.

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