I’m pretty sure I’ve used that headline in the past. Still, I’m a sap for cheesy headlines which reference bad Johnny Depp movies, so there it is.
Washington Times
One thing needs to be said before I delve into The 2010 Gil Arenas Fiasco. (The guy has some kind of drama EVERY year.) It’s flat-out cruel that the Washington Times axed its sports section right as this Arenas situation blew up and the Washington Redskins fired their head coach. Not that the paper could have predicted either scenario playing out when the decision was made likely at least weeks ago. It’s just a rather terrible coincidence that one of Washington D.C.’s two major newspapers cut its sports section just as the city became the focus of two of the biggest national sports stories.
Of course, who didn’t see Jim Zorn’s firing coming? Now Mike Shanahan will get hired and only the Washington Post will hold major coverage of it. As for the Arenas situation, this could be the NBA’s biggest story since Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson and Jermaine O’Neal beat up fans in Detroit in 2004. (Quick rant: I will never forget Jamaal Tinsley coming out of the locker room tunnel holding one of those broom/dust pan combo thingys that movie ushers use while looking to re-arrange the face of whatever drunken idiot got in his path. Never has one singular moment in sports brought a smile to my face more times in the ensuing years than that.)
In addition to the Arenas Gun Standoff and the combo of Zorn’s firing and Shanahan’s hiring, the D.C. area officially begins the Stephen Strasburg Era in a couple months, only the most exciting Washington Nationals moment since their 14 fans realized that, if nothing else, at least Nationals management wasn’t dumb enough to give Alfonso Soriano $136 million. Just a shame that the D.C. area is deprived of an avenue of sports journalism that they had relied on for so many years.
Gilbert’s excuse
I’m not going to analyze all the speculative stuff. Instead, I’ll focus on one of the few things about this case which we know. Arenas admitted that he stashed three unloaded guns in his locker at the Verizon Center, where the Wizards play their home games, because he didn’t want the guns around his children at his house. Where’s the logic in that?
I’m not arguing with keeping guns away from kids. That’s obviously a smart decision. What I can’t figure out is why he couldn’t buy/build himself a child-proof safe secured in some sort of child-proof room in his house. Arenas has made roughly $67 million during his playing career according to basketball-reference.com, which doesn’t count for the endorsement money he’s earned. What’s kept this guy from building a room in his house with gun cases that have locks which children could never break into?
After all, plenty of Americans are able to secure their weapons in the house without the threat of their kids stealing them. And most of those people don’t have anywhere near the amount of money that Arenas has, which enables him to afford the most elaborate safes to properly secure his guns. Building a child-proof area seems like a sensible decision. His inability to comprehend that is not only likely to get him suspended from the NBA and even arrested for violating local and federal laws, but it could cost him the remaining $90 million on his contract. The cost of building a gun room would’ve been a fraction of that amount.
KyleStack.com 