NBA's Arenas Suspended For Locker Room Guns

MADELEINE BRAND, host:

NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas, who plays for the Washington Wizards, has been suspended indefinitely without pay. He brought handguns into his teams locker room. In a statement, NBA commissioner David Stern said that Arenas was, quote, not fit to take the court. NPRs Mike Pesca is on the story. Hes here now.

Hi, Mike.

MIKE PESCA: Hi.

BRAND: All right. So I understand that this whole thing, this incident, began with a gambling debt.

PESCA: It seems to. And thats a popular pastime in the boring flights that NBA players take. The other player involved - the key other player involved - was a little-used guard named Javaris Crittenton. And he and Arenas had a gambling debt. Its been reported both ways who owed who money.

But apparently Crittenton either wanted his money or Arenas was joking with him. And in what transpired, Gilbert Arenas laid out four guns - its reported as three and four - four guns in the Wizards locker room and put a note on the guns and said pick one.

And then what happened next, which was recently reported today by the Washington Post, they put out more details, apparently Crittenton responded to this - what Arenas called a joke - Crittenton responded to this by grabbing his own gun and loading it and chambering a round.

BRAND: He just happened to have a gun on him in the locker room?

PESCA: We don't know about that. And theres a lot thats not known. The timeline of the story, it was originally reported by the New York Post, and they got perhaps the major sketches right but they got the date wrong, they reported that both drew guns on each other. It does seem now that Arenas was playing a joke, he thought.

And so I know youre saying joke, what kind of joke can you play with a hand gun? And so maybe we should talk about who Gilbert Arenas is, because hes a guy who has always been known as an original, a colorful character, and especially in the bland world of sports he loves practical jokes.

He has invented a secret identify for himself and he calls himself Agent Zero. He yells Hibachi before he shoots. So hes seen as this quirky guy. And even on his Twitter feed he always talks about laughter curing the pain. And he liked to make a joke of everything. And of course this joke went horribly too far and he faces federal charges. He faces perhaps city charges. And the NBA just wasnt having any of it. And the NBA did not like how he reacted to the incident afterwards, what he twittered and what he acted like during pre-game player introductions in a game against the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday.

BRAND: So, yeah, so theyre not amused at all. Hes joking around. Hes on Twitter - guns, ha-ha. And David Stern says, no, you are going to be suspended without pay. And thats a lot of pay, right?

PESCA: Yeah, he has a $111 million contract. Hes in the second year of that. Hes owed $80 million. And so you know, in official statements, Arenas, I guess, struck the right tone, or whoever helped him with his official statements. He said things like, joke or not, I now recognize what I did was a mistake and I was wrong.

But then, like I said, in player introductions he made those finger guns (makes shooting sound) and he mocked shooting his teammates. And thats when David Stern lowered the boom. And he said, like you said, not fit to play in the NBA. Suspended indefinitely. Stern hinted: and perhaps even worse.

BRAND: So, Mike, whats the next size 13 shoe to drop?

PESCA: We, you know, it could be the loss of the rest of his contract. That happened with Plaxico Burress, whos an NFL player who pled guilty to a guns charge. Could be a long suspension. The NBA is taking guns in the locker room as seriously as they could take anything.

BRAND: Well, what about this guy Crittenton?

PESCA: What Arenas says is that he was trying to cover up for Crittenton and this is why he took all of the blame. But right now the authorities are saying that its going to be very hard to bring a charge against Crittenton because theres no proof that he ever even had a gun or that the gun was even real. But Arenas admitted to bringing his guns to the locker room because he wanted to take them out of his house.

BRAND: Okay. Thanks, Mike. NPR sports correspondent Mike Pesca.

This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.