Changed Man? Gilbert Arenas Goes Silent

[duncan228]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200....ap/index.html

Changed man? Arenas goes silent

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Meet the new low-key Gilbert Arenas. Doesn't start. Doesn't talk. Doesn't blog. Doesn't try to take over the game. Doesn't even predict that he's going to.

It's as if Agent Zero has discovered an alter ego. So far, the Washington Wizards have no complaints.

"I think he's just here to play basketball now and not to talk about it," coach Eddie Jordan said. "It probably should be that way right now. I think he's going to let his game do his talking. ... We're all happy about it."

The Wizards and their fans have become so accustomed to Arenas' outrageous pronouncements that the silence is eerie.

The three-time All-Star made a quick exit from the locker room following Wednesday night's victory over the Boston Celtics as soon as reporters entered, carrying his street clothes over his shoulder so that could change in another room. All he would say is that he isn't going to talk again for the rest of the regular season. Maybe, just maybe, he'll open up for the playoffs.

Arenas' popular blog on the NBA's official Web site is stuck in time, the last entry dated March 25. The essay is typical way-out-there Arenas, including a passage in which he says he contemplated ramming his car into a pole because he had not been cleared to play following knee surgery.

After he was cleared to play, Arenas told reporters he wasn't going to make his return in a game against Milwaukee the following day. Arenas being Arenas, he did play, ending a 66-game absence. Mum's been the word ever since.

Why is he silent? Only Arenas knows for sure, but it's a matter of record that he doesn't take criticism well, and he received a lot of it following the game against the Bucks.

Arenas didn't work out with the team before the game, didn't bother to tell Jordan he was going to play until a few minutes before tipoff -- through a third party, no less -- and didn't show up on the bench until midway through the first quarter.

Members of the Wizards organization, from president Ernie Grunfeld on down, defended what looked to be a show of disrespect toward the coaching staff, yet it would be hard to imagine such behavior being tolerated from, say, Andray Blatche or Brendan Haywood.

Arenas looked understandably rusty during the game and blew a defensive assignment on the shot that won the game for Milwaukee at the buzzer. He's played in three games since coming back -- limited to 20-24 minutes off the bench -- and has looked better each time.

His shot wasn't falling Wednesday night against the Celtics -- 5-for-14 with 13 points -- but he twice passed up easy fast-break layups to let a teammate have the glory. He finished with three assists and four steals in 24 minutes. At no point did he look ready to scream "Hibachi," as he did when he was hitting game-winners last season.

"He's getting there," captain Antawn Jamison said. "Anytime you see Gil probing and really being aggressive, going to the lane and knocking people over, you know he feels comfortable. He's not going away from contact. I think the first game or two, he normally would have gone in there and drawn some contact, but he was kind of hesitant. I think he's turned the curve."

There are many hurdles in returning from a major knee injury. Arenas needs to get his conditioning back. He needs to re-mesh with a team that has become used to playing at the pace set by All-Stars Jamison and Caron Butler. He needs to learn to trust the knee and believe that it really has healed, a tenuous intangible given that the surgery in November was required because he rushed his rehabilitation from another operation on the same knee last April.

"He won't be Gil until next October," Jordan said.

That means Arenas will remain a subs ute for the foreseeable future, a role player who can add quite a bit of spark during the upcoming playoffs.

"I always laugh when people say they're better without him. Are you kidding me?" Boston coach Doc Rivers said. "Gilbert Arenas is a matchup problem every night, whether he starts or off the bench. He probably creates a bigger one coming off the bench."

The Wizards have won three straight as they chase Cleveland for homecourt advantage in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

"Gilbert's the difference," Jordan said. "We've been satisfied to a degree how we've been playing without Gil ... but it's very exciting to have him out there. It makes us an exciting team, a dangerous team, and right now it would be hard to play without him."

[Kobayagi]

G. Arenas: Focusing on the playoffs

When people are asking me, “How does it feel to be back?” I don’t consider myself back. It’s jinxy. That’s why I don’t talk to the media right now. They’re going to ask the same questions, “How does the knee feel? … How does it feel coming off the bench? … Are you opting out?”

You know what, there’s only so many times you can answer those same questions. I mean, can’t they just use the same quotes I said last week? There’s only so many times you can answer the same questions so I just said, “Forget it.”

I retired from talking to the media for this year. I’m going to wait until next season.

After this, I’m not blogging for a little bit either. Right now, it’s not all about me. It’s about keeping focus on the team. We’re in the middle of a playoff positioning fight. I’m trying to do anything I can to help us achieve our team goals. If that means coming off the bench, then that means coming off the bench.

I’m just trying to keep a level head and not worry about anything. I’m just focusing on playing and doing whatever I can to make the team better. I know most players, when they come back, especially when they’re the franchise player on the team, they can interrupt what’s going on. Instead of coming in and trying to fulfill what I used to do right away, I just wanted to come in as a role player and add to what the team was already doing. I don’t want them to have to change back to the dynamic we had last year and re-do their roles with the playoffs so near. Me coming back should be a plus, not a minus.

We lost the first game when I came back with that shot, but it’s a shot. It shouldn’t have gone down, but it did. You can’t blame a whole game on one shot.

Tom Knott ripped me in the paper and said I messed up on an assignment and this and that and compared me to Sprewell.

Stuff like that irritates me because they don’t put any thought into what they’re writing. They want people to “Ooh” and “Aah” about their stories but come on, if I was like Sprewell, I would have just sat out, dummy.

Let’s be honest.

The only reason you know anything about the contract situation is because I’m letting you know. Ninety-seven, 98 percent of the world would have just sat there on the bench and thought, “If I just sit here, I’m going to get X amount of money, if I don’t, anything can happen.”

But I love basketball too much. I said, “Screw it. If I get hurt again, I get hurt.”

At the end of the day, I’m still playing basketball. I can get hurt walking down the street.

But, Sprewell? Come on, Knott. You can be more creative than that. Last time I checked, I didn’t choke anybody. I didn’t say I need to feed my family.

My kids eat McDonald’s, how much money do I need to feed them? Cheeseburgers have gone up from 49 cents to 69 cents, so I could complain about that I guess. But if I need money for a McDonald’s cheeseburger for my kids, we have bigger problems than a game vs. Milwaukee.

But to be real for a second, in that Bucks game with the way we played, we should have put them away. I don’t want to take away from what Sessions did. You know, he was a D-League player for most of the year and came in at the end of the game with the confidence to hit a great shot. He hit that rainbow three.

My natural basketball instincts kicked in. I know they say not to leave the corner, but they threw the ball to Bogut near me and I thought I had a chance to disrupt him. But Bogut kicked it out and Sessions hit a rainbow shot over my head.

I know it’s easy to look back now and say, “Dang, I shouldn’t have did that.” But when you got the game on the line and they throw the ball by your head, you go for that switch. I bit on it and he hit the shot.

I could see being angry if it was Michael Redd in the corner, but there’s no scouting report on Sessions. He didn’t really shoot the whole game up to that point. I didn’t think the man could shoot, and he stepped up and hit a game winner.

Other than that, we’re 3-1 since I’ve been back. So I want that team momentum to continue. We got Detroit coming up and they’re resting their players for the playoffs, but we have to go in there and handle business because we’re still fighting for a higher seed. They got second locked up, so there ain’t no point for them to risk their guys, but we have to do what we got to do because Philly is on our tail. They’re trying for that fifth spot too. I think everybody wants Cleveland in that first round. They’ve been a .500 team ever since they made that trade and everybody wants a chance at that matchup.

We want Cleveland for our own reasons, we don’t think they can beat us in the playoffs three years straight. It’s hard to beat a team three years straight. We want to try our luck.

Coming Through a Little Late on My Prediction
The Boston game felt like a playoff game to an extent.

Not the atmosphere though, sometimes it got a little bit loud. I thought Game 1 of the season up there was more like a playoff atmosphere because they had so much going on and that crowd was just crazy.

Our crowd didn’t need to get into it because they believed in us that we were going to win the game.

I remember when I made the prediction at the beginning of the year that we would beat Boston, everybody laughed at me after we lost. They had their little short giggles. I’m glad you guys giggled, because I’m going to be giggling the whole summer now.

I think we’re the only team in the league to beat them three times this season. So, giggle giggle giggle back. You all were so quick to kill me, but five months later I got the last laugh.

Three out of four.

HA!