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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Words and Bullets
The Condemned of the Lebovici Affair
That the publisher of Orwell was assassinated in 1984 is a sinister coincidence that history will certainly pass over, but this world's Big Brothers will not soon be cheered: the adventures of the dialectic are not ended and will spoil their pleasures.
Now that the clamorers have practically killed themselves over the assassination of Gerard Lebovici, we have to authenticate what was said without considering the essential aspect, that is to say, the evidence, about this "affair."
The diverse hypotheses, unwrapped at the start so as to give nourishment to the unhappy readers of the press, all lead back to two domains artificially framed as separate and as not having the power to affect the other: the cinema and politics.
In these two spheres, these hypotheses, considered in all their variations, provide all the reassurances of the reigning spectacle. Devoloped pell mell, theses about Lebovici alleged that he was a godfather in the film mafia, a protagonist of the Red Brigades or the Baader Gang, Francois Besse [trans: one of Jacques Mesrine's henchmen], videocassette pirates, an agent of the KGB, a schizophrenic whose destiny was inscribed in the fatality of his marginal habits, drugs and sex shops, shady poker games, whiskey, cigarettes and broads, that is to say, anything and everything. Because it's a question, as usual, of avoiding all the truly embarassing questions. Does one realize that, just before the assassination, Champ Libre published The History of Anarchy by Claude Marmel, with a preface in which Gerard Lebovici exposed the Nazi underworld past of its author, who today is recycled at the Institute for Social History and Sovietology? Or that, at the same moment, there was anonymously published in a fake issue of East and West, the Institute's review, an article -- in which the tone, subject and coincidental timing were reminiscent of Gerard Lebovici -- that denounced and provided supporting documentation about Harmel's Nazi past? Or that it is in this very virulent milieu of the extreme right, swarming behind the folding screen of this same Institute, that was the source of the dossiers that helped orchestrate the press campaigns against [Pierre] Goldman and [Henri] Curiel, press campaigns that preceded their assassinations [in 1979 and 1978, respectively]? Or that the collusion among the extreme right, the mafia and the secret services don't need to be further demonstrated, not at a time in which a murderous anti-Basque collaboration exists in the death squads that re-unite a long list of Spanish cops, ex-OAS [trans: Organization de Armee Secrete] officers, French SDECE [trans: Service de Documentation Exterieur et de Contre-Espionnage] agents and other assorted thugs? Or that the reprinting by Champ Libre of Jacques Mesrine's The Death Instinct constituted a not-so-small affront to the honor of the police? When one considers all this, one can see that at the very least one hypothesis is more plausible than all the others. And one also sees why it was necessary to keep it quiet.
But the question isn't simply knowing which straw broke the camel's back: the concurrence of the affairs of cinematic distribution, Mesrine, videocassettes, or the more directly revolutionary activity of Lebovici. In effect, whether the attack came from the more reactionary milieus of the cinema or from an extreme right more politically connected with the State's police services, one knows quite well that all the mafias have connections between them, that their members can be found at the same tables at certain restaurants and cafes, where they agree in their private salons on the one inviolable law that unites them: the bitter defense of this world. Their offers and encouragements, their promises, like their information, can easily pass for the others. It is in such a context that one learns that, after six months of investigation, all the trails have gone cold in the same icy silence [trans: omerta]. And the general complicity has been well proved by the press, which certainly hasn't demonstrated that the assassination wasn't encouraged and desired by all sides. This was an execution by the established social order.
If we now pay close attention to the particular role of the media in this affair, it is not to verify, yet again, that journalists lie above all and constantly, but instead to make precise the "how and why" of these lies. Because rarely does assassination by the spectacle and the spectacle of assassination find such a perfect coincidence. And in this sinister adequation between the second death of Lebovici and his physical death, seldom have hired pens and handymen [trans: valets de plume et hommes de main] so effectively shared their foul deed.
Since we, like Diderot, believe that "all the nonsense of metaphysics isn't as valuable as an ad hominem argument," we will cites these sources directly:
"Lebovici didn't hide his sympathies for the dynamiters of 'bourgeois society,' in particular, the Baader Gang in West Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy" (Lamy and Babronski, France-Soir, 9 March 1984).
"Lebovici voluntarily associated with the thugs of the underworld and the wanna-be thugs of intellectual terrorism who conduct physical terrorism" (Le Quotidien de Paris, 15 March 1984).
"Lebovici entertained relations with the milieus that are close to international terrorism . . . he is also the publisher of works consecrated to terrorism or written by terrorists. . . . " (Puyalte, Le Figaro, 15 May 1984).
"It wasn't a secret in extreme-left circles that he financed revolutionary groups" (Lemoine, VSD, 15 March 1984).
At Champ Libre, "he published the thoughts and strategies of the libertarian and terrorist Left. . . . Across the center of Leftist propaganda, Lebovici's contacts extended to all of international terrorism. He maintained relations in Germany with the Baader Gang, and also with the Red Brigades in Italy. In a general fashion, all the dynamiters of bourgeois society, Christian and Western civilization, fascinated this Israelite. . . . Lebovici, like all influential Jews, was constrained to spit upon Israel. . . . Subsidize subversion . . . accept the risks" (Cochet, Present, 10 March 1984).
"That these unhealthy passions caused his downfall is the opinion of all who knew him" (Minute, 10 March 1984).
"A most mysterious man, who provided the 'open sesame' to the clandestine milieus of the most destruction anarchism, fascinated Gerard Lebovici. He is the filmmaker and writer Guy Debord, 54 years old, the gray eminence of Champ Libre, chief of the situationists, a movement of libertarian tendency that was one of the detonators of the May '68 events. . . . Guy Debord, sympathesizer with the terrorists of the Baader Gang and the Red Brigades" (Babronski, Lamy, Brigouleix, France-Soir, 9 and 10 March 1984).
"Finally, is not Lebo a man under the influence? Beginning with Debord, did he not drift towards extremist organizations such as the Red Brigades and Direct Action, which he financed out of a taste for scandal and provocation? . . . He was fascinated by clandestinity, open contestation, revolt against society. But to live dangerously, one must take risks" (Alia, Le Nouvel Observateur, 23 March 1984).
"Strange person, this Debord. Author of ultra-Left theories that found their hours of glory in May 1968, he tried to obtain someone to produce every little thing he demanded." And so, didn't Lebovici "surrender the publishing house to Guy Debord . . . didn't Lebovici, as some think, fall under the influence of the 'guru' Debord?" (Huleux, L'Humanitite, 13 March 1984).
"I didn't know Gerard Lebovici, but I don't think I would have liked him. . . . With Guy Debord, the situationist who found a situation, he secretly worked to shake our society and the last traces of the sacred that it kept, notably in Art. Also, his murder appears to us like a translation of frenzied suicide, the death instinct that, in a certain way, turned against him and zeroed him out" (Charriere, Le Quotidien de Paris, 18 March 1984).
"In the life of Lebovici, Guy Debord plays the part of darkness. 'The Devil.' A crappy Mephistopheles in a real tragedy: that of the bewitching of a man" . . . . "And for many police officers concerned with crime, from the DST [trans: Direction de la Surveillance de Territoire, the French CIA] to General Intelligence [trans: the French FBI], the most serious trail leads to the entourage of Guy Debord" (Prier, Tiller, Le Journal du Dimanche, 11 and 18 March 1984).
"Who killed Gerard Lebovici? For many police officers, whether they work with DST, General Intelligence or the Criminal Bureau [trans: Parisian police], the most serious trails lead to the entourage of Guy Debord. . . . This frightening agent of destabilization was in contact with Italian intellectuals, Germans, who were themselves very close to revolutionary groups, Red Brigades and the Baader Gang" (Paris-Match, 6 April 1984).
In the "extravagant collection of correspondence published by Champ Libre, Debord wields the pen and Lebovici the signature in the writing of icy letters of hate and contempt, in which one senses a formible desire to do evil, to wound, to sully, to debase, to annihilate the receiver. Letters of crazy sadism, total cynicism. Literally diabolical; of which the true meaning, the political goal, is to subvert everything that exists and even the untouchable social convention of private correspondence. . . .
"And after ten years of oblivion, he reaches this unexpected madness of terrorism. The attacks of the Red Brigades and Baader, death elevated into a political system, the destruction, finally, of the ruins, as they've called them. These terrorists are enraged killers who require gurus, patrons, thinkers, ideologues, revolutionary justifications. It is in this dance of death that the Lebovicis, Debords, Feltrinellis, Goldmanns, Sanguinettis and others find their rhythm. . . .
"Who benefits? Who pulls the strings of these bloody puppets?
"One imagines the pleasure that a Lebovici must have experienced by debating ideology with a sectarian from Direct Action and a thinker from the Red Brigades, and then finishing the day at Maxim's, between his friend Badinter, Guard of the Seals, and his accomplice at the poker table, Montand. But can you imagine him laughing at 'Mohamed Mohamedovitch,' who holds up to this puppet the allures of the exhibitor of marinettes?
"This life of derision, of lies and appearances. All the things those who knew him could only imagine. Who could believe that Lebo had a dossier on him, contained in a metal case, at the DST? Who divined that behind Debord, the implacable enemy of Stalinism, there was a man who held a Soviet bank between his teeth? Who knew of the interest of the other, forgotten situationists, one [trans: Mustapha Khayati] in the armed struggle of Yasser Arafat, the Soviet general of the Palestinian army, while another [trans: Rene Vienet?] was arrested in China and charged with espionage? Who would believe that the young people, who in the revolt also anathematized Stalinism, would learn, 15 years later, as a result of an investigation into an assassination, what they had always been: agents of subversion and destabilization in the service of Soviet imperialism" (De Beketch, Minute, 17 March 1984).
The campaign didn't simply seek to discredit the people who attack the press or break with the consensus for sowing doubt and confusion. Beyond its subsidiary goals, this journalistic police force, for which words have the same function as bullets, clearly affirms: "That's why it was necessary to kill Lebovici; that's why it will, sooner or later, be necessary to do the same with Debord and the other revolutionaries." Moreover, nothing's lacking for the creation of truly descriptive files on targeted people, with their habits and addresses and telephone numbers. But the killers shouldn't start rejoicing yet: we will henceforth be on our guard and, whether it is in a parking lot or elsewhere, we will dispatch the first who come. In addition, the second attack has the disadvantage of being signed ipso facto, completely exposing the origin of the first.
In other similar affairs, the press campaign preceded the assassination; today it comes afterward. Whether this campaign served to reinforce the arms of the killers or the second blow dealt by the journalists who greeted the assassination with applause, there is an objective bond between those who killed and those who say why it was necessary to kill. As for those who applauded the loudest: did they do so only because they didn't have anything to do with the job?
At the top of the list of this visible party of the enemy, it is necessary to make a special place for those who, regretably, were unable to be at the actual execution:
"I went to see Lebovici in his office. . . . He dials up the mafia . . . he tried to draw me into a night of poker" . . . . "Debord has an unbelievable magnetism. . . . He makes use of psychological techniques. . . . " (Manchette, interviewed in Le Journal du Dimanche, 11 March and VSD, 15 March 1984).
"Guegan came up with the name 'Champ Libre' . . . Lebovici came up with the money. It's my belief that, since 1972, he was an agent for Belmondo or Cassell. . . . A representative of capital. . . . He paid badly. . . . Within several months, he turned a living place into a museum. Mixing sarcasm with suspicion, he drove diverse people away from him. . . . We think that the opinion of Debord . . . determined Lebovici's 'passage to action' and his metamorphosis into a dialectian and revolutionary. Debord's affirmations concerning his [Lebovici's] role as publisher . . . are inexact. They confirmed Lebovici's situation, prisoner of a role that led to verbal excess. Under the reign of a severe 'father', professor of radicalism [Debord], he [Lebovici] surrounded himself with 'gangsters'" (Sorin, Le Monde, 10 March 1984).
"Under the influence of Guy Debord, Lebovici became another man: he fired Gerard Guegan . . . and only stayed with his guru. Debord was already 41. Gerard Guegan ran into him later on; [trans: he was] antiquated, ceremonious, haughty. . . . Lebovici wanted to give the Left a whack. For Guegan and his friends, behind this whack was Guy Debord, the invisible one; Debord, the fanatic of himself. 'His only goal is posterity,' Guegan says. 'His disappearance is a trick so that people will still be reading him in 30 years. He'd like to be taken for Rimbaud, who left for Africa and never wrote another line. But for Rimbaud, it wasn't a trick" . . . "According to Gerard Guegan, Gerard Lebovici . . . adopted the hard, implacable tone of the situationists, headed by Guy Debord, without doubt thereby provoking the hatred of those who responded to [trans: killed] him" (Guegan interviewed in VSD, 15 March 1984; Le Journal du Dimanche, 11 March; and Le Quotidien de Paris, 9 March 1984).
"Gerard Lebovici wrote, not with humor, that Jacques Mesrine's 'machinations' were, 'for the French of our epoch, the perfect symbols of liberty' . . . 'The frightening honor of being the publisher of Jacques Mesrine, concluded Lebovici, fell to Champ Libre.' No doubt a victim of faltering memory, G. Lebovici failed to remember that Mesrine had also made death threats against his [previous] publisher. That is to say, to consider it a 'frightening' honor to reprint The Death Instinct, in which the affair's principal protagonist is banished to the dark side, is in effect to display exceptional recklessness. 'It is the man who holds the arms that is more important than the arms themselves,' Mesrine wrote. Strange morals, sad epoch -- that is to say, [trans: Lebovici was] a naive simpleton." (Alliot, Le Monde, 24 February, 1984).
"This [very common] name 'Francois,' written on a piece of paper [which Lebovici had on his person the day he was killed], is terribly disappointing for the 'All-Paris-Cinema,' for the last readers of the situationists, who dreamt of an end of politico-literary history . . . by [committing] murder. This clue reduces the brutal death of Gerard Lebovici to an intimate drama, too precise for the police, tomorrow or in a month, to put a name to the face of the assassins. . . . 'It's a shame. I would gladly imagine a wilder motive,' confided a producer on Monday, vaguely in relation to the affairs of Gerard Lebovici. . . . 'Lebo played with fire, said a press attache.' A certain taste for poker parties, furtive meetings. . . . In a certain way, Gerard Lebovici was asking for it [trans: appele le meurtre]. 'If someone had to die in the world of the cinema, it was him, confided someone who, like the majority of the people we talked to, preferred to remain anonymous.' Why? Because he apparently gave into the allures of permanent conspiracy; he hid his role as literary patron from the world of the cinema, and, at Champ Libre, his publishing house, he hid the extent of his power in the cinema. . . . This duality, which certainly qualifies as 'schizophrenic,' was surprising. Today it only adds weight to suspicions. Thus, it appears that this energetic man, active in the extroverted, self-promoting world of film, allowed himself to come under the influence of Guy Debord, the solitary one, who was discreet to the point of obsession, suffering from an evitably fatal weakness. Gerard Lebovici 'went downhill,' according to ten, twenty witnesses; he gradually turned away from the social norm accepted by his professional milieu, all because the 'guru' Debord led Lebovici psychologically and intellectually astray. 'Too many provocations, too many public insults; it had to end badly' . . . . It had to 'end badly' because of his hardly veiled fascination with criminal marginality, which, according to certain people close to him [Lebovici], found its full expression in the recent reprinting of Jacques Mesrine's The Death Instinct by Champ Libre" (Boggio, Le Monde, 15 March 1984).
There they are, the first convicts of the Lebovici affair. In making such judgments, they have judged themselves.
No doubt, a less mendacious epoch than ours, one in which the professionals of the press weren't also professional falsifiers, would find several who could ask good questions, such as these: For what "shameful reason of the State" (Le Matin, 23 March 1984) was [police superintendant James] Genthial investigated and removed from office, and replaced by a more docile functionary? Did he discover something embarassing? Why is it that, "in the Lebovici affair, General Intelligence and the DST didn't furnish their complete files to the head of the Criminal Bureau" (Le Journal du Dimanche, 25 March 1984)? Why did Besse, the honorable bandit, take pains to deny that he was accused of committing the crime? Isn't Besse himself still alive? Those who investigate Lebovici's death, aren't they the ones who have no interest in determining what the truth really is? There will be nothing astonishing: the State doesn't hide its crimes, and it isn't, for this reason, a criminal among other criminals, but the absolute mafia capo. (Thus, this same State, which for years had Lebovici and Debord under constant surveillance, didn't fear to announce its assuredly incompetent approval: "With confidence, Regis Debray declares 'that one leftist intellectual in two has read the very beautiful books by Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle and The Treatise on Living for Young People [trans: the latter is by Raoul Vaneigem, not Debord]" -- declaration on television by a special counsel to Mitterand, cited in Le Canard Enchaine, 3 April 1984. "Not only do they shoot us, but they search our pockets, as well," remarked the impressionist Degas. But, when touched by the hands of the enemy, the pure gold of theory becomes carbon).
The press claims that this deliberate media accumulation of obvious counter-truths and delirious inventions (the least of which is seeing terrorist or Stalinist traits in those who radically denounced terrorism teleguided by the State and Stalinism) constitutes a true historical eradiction of the Situationist International. Because that which motivates their hate has been involuntarily acknowledged:
Gerard Lebovici was a "fanatic of the Situationist International, the political and revolutionary movement that was at the origin of the events of May 68" (Rivarol, 16 March 1984).
" . . . the enrage Guy Debord, the leader of the situationists, the most nihilistic, the most destructive of the anarcho-surrealist movements, probably the principal promoter of subversion of 1968" (Present, 10 March 1984).
"But what is situationism? What is its program? It can be described in a few words: 'Discredit the good. Compromise all leaders. Shake their words. Deliver them up to disdain. Utilize vile men. Disorganize authority. Sow discord among the citizens. Turn young against old. Ridicule tradition. Disrupt supplies. Make people listen to lascivious music. Spread lechery.' Or, if one prefers: 'The extreme of nihilism is reached through a decomposition of the system and this is what the Situationist International is skilled in exploiting. We only construct on the ruins of the system'" (Minute, 17 March 1984).
To complete this presentation of the press's exagerrated simplification of the "situationist program," and so as to expose all the lies cited above, it suffices to read any revolutionary text published by Editions Champ Libre. And, when paging through the catalogue, the reader will easily see the subversive value of Editions Champ Libre, and the praise due Gerard Lebovici, which has already been demonstrated in a perfectly sufficient manner.
If now his person is slowing dissolving in our memories, the ideas that Gerard Lebovici defended are still alive, and each revolutionary anticipates that he or she will get revenge in one fashion or another, and not only through the blows dispensed every day against a world that has been condemned. Because it was him, because it is us.
"Les mots et les balles" was originally published as an anonymous pamphlet in Paris in August 1984. Translated by NOT BORED! August 2003.
To read Herve-Claude Lapidaire's hostile review of "Words and Bullets," published on May 1985 by a newspaper that claimed to be "libertarian," click here.situa
The Condemned of the Lebovici Affair
That the publisher of Orwell was assassinated in 1984 is a sinister coincidence that history will certainly pass over, but this world's Big Brothers will not soon be cheered: the adventures of the dialectic are not ended and will spoil their pleasures.
Now that the clamorers have practically killed themselves over the assassination of Gerard Lebovici, we have to authenticate what was said without considering the essential aspect, that is to say, the evidence, about this "affair."
The diverse hypotheses, unwrapped at the start so as to give nourishment to the unhappy readers of the press, all lead back to two domains artificially framed as separate and as not having the power to affect the other: the cinema and politics.
In these two spheres, these hypotheses, considered in all their variations, provide all the reassurances of the reigning spectacle. Devoloped pell mell, theses about Lebovici alleged that he was a godfather in the film mafia, a protagonist of the Red Brigades or the Baader Gang, Francois Besse [trans: one of Jacques Mesrine's henchmen], videocassette pirates, an agent of the KGB, a schizophrenic whose destiny was inscribed in the fatality of his marginal habits, drugs and sex shops, shady poker games, whiskey, cigarettes and broads, that is to say, anything and everything. Because it's a question, as usual, of avoiding all the truly embarassing questions. Does one realize that, just before the assassination, Champ Libre published The History of Anarchy by Claude Marmel, with a preface in which Gerard Lebovici exposed the Nazi underworld past of its author, who today is recycled at the Institute for Social History and Sovietology? Or that, at the same moment, there was anonymously published in a fake issue of East and West, the Institute's review, an article -- in which the tone, subject and coincidental timing were reminiscent of Gerard Lebovici -- that denounced and provided supporting documentation about Harmel's Nazi past? Or that it is in this very virulent milieu of the extreme right, swarming behind the folding screen of this same Institute, that was the source of the dossiers that helped orchestrate the press campaigns against [Pierre] Goldman and [Henri] Curiel, press campaigns that preceded their assassinations [in 1979 and 1978, respectively]? Or that the collusion among the extreme right, the mafia and the secret services don't need to be further demonstrated, not at a time in which a murderous anti-Basque collaboration exists in the death squads that re-unite a long list of Spanish cops, ex-OAS [trans: Organization de Armee Secrete] officers, French SDECE [trans: Service de Documentation Exterieur et de Contre-Espionnage] agents and other assorted thugs? Or that the reprinting by Champ Libre of Jacques Mesrine's The Death Instinct constituted a not-so-small affront to the honor of the police? When one considers all this, one can see that at the very least one hypothesis is more plausible than all the others. And one also sees why it was necessary to keep it quiet.
But the question isn't simply knowing which straw broke the camel's back: the concurrence of the affairs of cinematic distribution, Mesrine, videocassettes, or the more directly revolutionary activity of Lebovici. In effect, whether the attack came from the more reactionary milieus of the cinema or from an extreme right more politically connected with the State's police services, one knows quite well that all the mafias have connections between them, that their members can be found at the same tables at certain restaurants and cafes, where they agree in their private salons on the one inviolable law that unites them: the bitter defense of this world. Their offers and encouragements, their promises, like their information, can easily pass for the others. It is in such a context that one learns that, after six months of investigation, all the trails have gone cold in the same icy silence [trans: omerta]. And the general complicity has been well proved by the press, which certainly hasn't demonstrated that the assassination wasn't encouraged and desired by all sides. This was an execution by the established social order.
If we now pay close attention to the particular role of the media in this affair, it is not to verify, yet again, that journalists lie above all and constantly, but instead to make precise the "how and why" of these lies. Because rarely does assassination by the spectacle and the spectacle of assassination find such a perfect coincidence. And in this sinister adequation between the second death of Lebovici and his physical death, seldom have hired pens and handymen [trans: valets de plume et hommes de main] so effectively shared their foul deed.
Since we, like Diderot, believe that "all the nonsense of metaphysics isn't as valuable as an ad hominem argument," we will cites these sources directly:
"Lebovici didn't hide his sympathies for the dynamiters of 'bourgeois society,' in particular, the Baader Gang in West Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy" (Lamy and Babronski, France-Soir, 9 March 1984).
"Lebovici voluntarily associated with the thugs of the underworld and the wanna-be thugs of intellectual terrorism who conduct physical terrorism" (Le Quotidien de Paris, 15 March 1984).
"Lebovici entertained relations with the milieus that are close to international terrorism . . . he is also the publisher of works consecrated to terrorism or written by terrorists. . . . " (Puyalte, Le Figaro, 15 May 1984).
"It wasn't a secret in extreme-left circles that he financed revolutionary groups" (Lemoine, VSD, 15 March 1984).
At Champ Libre, "he published the thoughts and strategies of the libertarian and terrorist Left. . . . Across the center of Leftist propaganda, Lebovici's contacts extended to all of international terrorism. He maintained relations in Germany with the Baader Gang, and also with the Red Brigades in Italy. In a general fashion, all the dynamiters of bourgeois society, Christian and Western civilization, fascinated this Israelite. . . . Lebovici, like all influential Jews, was constrained to spit upon Israel. . . . Subsidize subversion . . . accept the risks" (Cochet, Present, 10 March 1984).
"That these unhealthy passions caused his downfall is the opinion of all who knew him" (Minute, 10 March 1984).
"A most mysterious man, who provided the 'open sesame' to the clandestine milieus of the most destruction anarchism, fascinated Gerard Lebovici. He is the filmmaker and writer Guy Debord, 54 years old, the gray eminence of Champ Libre, chief of the situationists, a movement of libertarian tendency that was one of the detonators of the May '68 events. . . . Guy Debord, sympathesizer with the terrorists of the Baader Gang and the Red Brigades" (Babronski, Lamy, Brigouleix, France-Soir, 9 and 10 March 1984).
"Finally, is not Lebo a man under the influence? Beginning with Debord, did he not drift towards extremist organizations such as the Red Brigades and Direct Action, which he financed out of a taste for scandal and provocation? . . . He was fascinated by clandestinity, open contestation, revolt against society. But to live dangerously, one must take risks" (Alia, Le Nouvel Observateur, 23 March 1984).
"Strange person, this Debord. Author of ultra-Left theories that found their hours of glory in May 1968, he tried to obtain someone to produce every little thing he demanded." And so, didn't Lebovici "surrender the publishing house to Guy Debord . . . didn't Lebovici, as some think, fall under the influence of the 'guru' Debord?" (Huleux, L'Humanitite, 13 March 1984).
"I didn't know Gerard Lebovici, but I don't think I would have liked him. . . . With Guy Debord, the situationist who found a situation, he secretly worked to shake our society and the last traces of the sacred that it kept, notably in Art. Also, his murder appears to us like a translation of frenzied suicide, the death instinct that, in a certain way, turned against him and zeroed him out" (Charriere, Le Quotidien de Paris, 18 March 1984).
"In the life of Lebovici, Guy Debord plays the part of darkness. 'The Devil.' A crappy Mephistopheles in a real tragedy: that of the bewitching of a man" . . . . "And for many police officers concerned with crime, from the DST [trans: Direction de la Surveillance de Territoire, the French CIA] to General Intelligence [trans: the French FBI], the most serious trail leads to the entourage of Guy Debord" (Prier, Tiller, Le Journal du Dimanche, 11 and 18 March 1984).
"Who killed Gerard Lebovici? For many police officers, whether they work with DST, General Intelligence or the Criminal Bureau [trans: Parisian police], the most serious trails lead to the entourage of Guy Debord. . . . This frightening agent of destabilization was in contact with Italian intellectuals, Germans, who were themselves very close to revolutionary groups, Red Brigades and the Baader Gang" (Paris-Match, 6 April 1984).
In the "extravagant collection of correspondence published by Champ Libre, Debord wields the pen and Lebovici the signature in the writing of icy letters of hate and contempt, in which one senses a formible desire to do evil, to wound, to sully, to debase, to annihilate the receiver. Letters of crazy sadism, total cynicism. Literally diabolical; of which the true meaning, the political goal, is to subvert everything that exists and even the untouchable social convention of private correspondence. . . .
"And after ten years of oblivion, he reaches this unexpected madness of terrorism. The attacks of the Red Brigades and Baader, death elevated into a political system, the destruction, finally, of the ruins, as they've called them. These terrorists are enraged killers who require gurus, patrons, thinkers, ideologues, revolutionary justifications. It is in this dance of death that the Lebovicis, Debords, Feltrinellis, Goldmanns, Sanguinettis and others find their rhythm. . . .
"Who benefits? Who pulls the strings of these bloody puppets?
"One imagines the pleasure that a Lebovici must have experienced by debating ideology with a sectarian from Direct Action and a thinker from the Red Brigades, and then finishing the day at Maxim's, between his friend Badinter, Guard of the Seals, and his accomplice at the poker table, Montand. But can you imagine him laughing at 'Mohamed Mohamedovitch,' who holds up to this puppet the allures of the exhibitor of marinettes?
"This life of derision, of lies and appearances. All the things those who knew him could only imagine. Who could believe that Lebo had a dossier on him, contained in a metal case, at the DST? Who divined that behind Debord, the implacable enemy of Stalinism, there was a man who held a Soviet bank between his teeth? Who knew of the interest of the other, forgotten situationists, one [trans: Mustapha Khayati] in the armed struggle of Yasser Arafat, the Soviet general of the Palestinian army, while another [trans: Rene Vienet?] was arrested in China and charged with espionage? Who would believe that the young people, who in the revolt also anathematized Stalinism, would learn, 15 years later, as a result of an investigation into an assassination, what they had always been: agents of subversion and destabilization in the service of Soviet imperialism" (De Beketch, Minute, 17 March 1984).
The campaign didn't simply seek to discredit the people who attack the press or break with the consensus for sowing doubt and confusion. Beyond its subsidiary goals, this journalistic police force, for which words have the same function as bullets, clearly affirms: "That's why it was necessary to kill Lebovici; that's why it will, sooner or later, be necessary to do the same with Debord and the other revolutionaries." Moreover, nothing's lacking for the creation of truly descriptive files on targeted people, with their habits and addresses and telephone numbers. But the killers shouldn't start rejoicing yet: we will henceforth be on our guard and, whether it is in a parking lot or elsewhere, we will dispatch the first who come. In addition, the second attack has the disadvantage of being signed ipso facto, completely exposing the origin of the first.
In other similar affairs, the press campaign preceded the assassination; today it comes afterward. Whether this campaign served to reinforce the arms of the killers or the second blow dealt by the journalists who greeted the assassination with applause, there is an objective bond between those who killed and those who say why it was necessary to kill. As for those who applauded the loudest: did they do so only because they didn't have anything to do with the job?
At the top of the list of this visible party of the enemy, it is necessary to make a special place for those who, regretably, were unable to be at the actual execution:
"I went to see Lebovici in his office. . . . He dials up the mafia . . . he tried to draw me into a night of poker" . . . . "Debord has an unbelievable magnetism. . . . He makes use of psychological techniques. . . . " (Manchette, interviewed in Le Journal du Dimanche, 11 March and VSD, 15 March 1984).
"Guegan came up with the name 'Champ Libre' . . . Lebovici came up with the money. It's my belief that, since 1972, he was an agent for Belmondo or Cassell. . . . A representative of capital. . . . He paid badly. . . . Within several months, he turned a living place into a museum. Mixing sarcasm with suspicion, he drove diverse people away from him. . . . We think that the opinion of Debord . . . determined Lebovici's 'passage to action' and his metamorphosis into a dialectian and revolutionary. Debord's affirmations concerning his [Lebovici's] role as publisher . . . are inexact. They confirmed Lebovici's situation, prisoner of a role that led to verbal excess. Under the reign of a severe 'father', professor of radicalism [Debord], he [Lebovici] surrounded himself with 'gangsters'" (Sorin, Le Monde, 10 March 1984).
"Under the influence of Guy Debord, Lebovici became another man: he fired Gerard Guegan . . . and only stayed with his guru. Debord was already 41. Gerard Guegan ran into him later on; [trans: he was] antiquated, ceremonious, haughty. . . . Lebovici wanted to give the Left a whack. For Guegan and his friends, behind this whack was Guy Debord, the invisible one; Debord, the fanatic of himself. 'His only goal is posterity,' Guegan says. 'His disappearance is a trick so that people will still be reading him in 30 years. He'd like to be taken for Rimbaud, who left for Africa and never wrote another line. But for Rimbaud, it wasn't a trick" . . . "According to Gerard Guegan, Gerard Lebovici . . . adopted the hard, implacable tone of the situationists, headed by Guy Debord, without doubt thereby provoking the hatred of those who responded to [trans: killed] him" (Guegan interviewed in VSD, 15 March 1984; Le Journal du Dimanche, 11 March; and Le Quotidien de Paris, 9 March 1984).
"Gerard Lebovici wrote, not with humor, that Jacques Mesrine's 'machinations' were, 'for the French of our epoch, the perfect symbols of liberty' . . . 'The frightening honor of being the publisher of Jacques Mesrine, concluded Lebovici, fell to Champ Libre.' No doubt a victim of faltering memory, G. Lebovici failed to remember that Mesrine had also made death threats against his [previous] publisher. That is to say, to consider it a 'frightening' honor to reprint The Death Instinct, in which the affair's principal protagonist is banished to the dark side, is in effect to display exceptional recklessness. 'It is the man who holds the arms that is more important than the arms themselves,' Mesrine wrote. Strange morals, sad epoch -- that is to say, [trans: Lebovici was] a naive simpleton." (Alliot, Le Monde, 24 February, 1984).
"This [very common] name 'Francois,' written on a piece of paper [which Lebovici had on his person the day he was killed], is terribly disappointing for the 'All-Paris-Cinema,' for the last readers of the situationists, who dreamt of an end of politico-literary history . . . by [committing] murder. This clue reduces the brutal death of Gerard Lebovici to an intimate drama, too precise for the police, tomorrow or in a month, to put a name to the face of the assassins. . . . 'It's a shame. I would gladly imagine a wilder motive,' confided a producer on Monday, vaguely in relation to the affairs of Gerard Lebovici. . . . 'Lebo played with fire, said a press attache.' A certain taste for poker parties, furtive meetings. . . . In a certain way, Gerard Lebovici was asking for it [trans: appele le meurtre]. 'If someone had to die in the world of the cinema, it was him, confided someone who, like the majority of the people we talked to, preferred to remain anonymous.' Why? Because he apparently gave into the allures of permanent conspiracy; he hid his role as literary patron from the world of the cinema, and, at Champ Libre, his publishing house, he hid the extent of his power in the cinema. . . . This duality, which certainly qualifies as 'schizophrenic,' was surprising. Today it only adds weight to suspicions. Thus, it appears that this energetic man, active in the extroverted, self-promoting world of film, allowed himself to come under the influence of Guy Debord, the solitary one, who was discreet to the point of obsession, suffering from an evitably fatal weakness. Gerard Lebovici 'went downhill,' according to ten, twenty witnesses; he gradually turned away from the social norm accepted by his professional milieu, all because the 'guru' Debord led Lebovici psychologically and intellectually astray. 'Too many provocations, too many public insults; it had to end badly' . . . . It had to 'end badly' because of his hardly veiled fascination with criminal marginality, which, according to certain people close to him [Lebovici], found its full expression in the recent reprinting of Jacques Mesrine's The Death Instinct by Champ Libre" (Boggio, Le Monde, 15 March 1984).
There they are, the first convicts of the Lebovici affair. In making such judgments, they have judged themselves.
No doubt, a less mendacious epoch than ours, one in which the professionals of the press weren't also professional falsifiers, would find several who could ask good questions, such as these: For what "shameful reason of the State" (Le Matin, 23 March 1984) was [police superintendant James] Genthial investigated and removed from office, and replaced by a more docile functionary? Did he discover something embarassing? Why is it that, "in the Lebovici affair, General Intelligence and the DST didn't furnish their complete files to the head of the Criminal Bureau" (Le Journal du Dimanche, 25 March 1984)? Why did Besse, the honorable bandit, take pains to deny that he was accused of committing the crime? Isn't Besse himself still alive? Those who investigate Lebovici's death, aren't they the ones who have no interest in determining what the truth really is? There will be nothing astonishing: the State doesn't hide its crimes, and it isn't, for this reason, a criminal among other criminals, but the absolute mafia capo. (Thus, this same State, which for years had Lebovici and Debord under constant surveillance, didn't fear to announce its assuredly incompetent approval: "With confidence, Regis Debray declares 'that one leftist intellectual in two has read the very beautiful books by Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle and The Treatise on Living for Young People [trans: the latter is by Raoul Vaneigem, not Debord]" -- declaration on television by a special counsel to Mitterand, cited in Le Canard Enchaine, 3 April 1984. "Not only do they shoot us, but they search our pockets, as well," remarked the impressionist Degas. But, when touched by the hands of the enemy, the pure gold of theory becomes carbon).
The press claims that this deliberate media accumulation of obvious counter-truths and delirious inventions (the least of which is seeing terrorist or Stalinist traits in those who radically denounced terrorism teleguided by the State and Stalinism) constitutes a true historical eradiction of the Situationist International. Because that which motivates their hate has been involuntarily acknowledged:
Gerard Lebovici was a "fanatic of the Situationist International, the political and revolutionary movement that was at the origin of the events of May 68" (Rivarol, 16 March 1984).
" . . . the enrage Guy Debord, the leader of the situationists, the most nihilistic, the most destructive of the anarcho-surrealist movements, probably the principal promoter of subversion of 1968" (Present, 10 March 1984).
"But what is situationism? What is its program? It can be described in a few words: 'Discredit the good. Compromise all leaders. Shake their words. Deliver them up to disdain. Utilize vile men. Disorganize authority. Sow discord among the citizens. Turn young against old. Ridicule tradition. Disrupt supplies. Make people listen to lascivious music. Spread lechery.' Or, if one prefers: 'The extreme of nihilism is reached through a decomposition of the system and this is what the Situationist International is skilled in exploiting. We only construct on the ruins of the system'" (Minute, 17 March 1984).
To complete this presentation of the press's exagerrated simplification of the "situationist program," and so as to expose all the lies cited above, it suffices to read any revolutionary text published by Editions Champ Libre. And, when paging through the catalogue, the reader will easily see the subversive value of Editions Champ Libre, and the praise due Gerard Lebovici, which has already been demonstrated in a perfectly sufficient manner.
If now his person is slowing dissolving in our memories, the ideas that Gerard Lebovici defended are still alive, and each revolutionary anticipates that he or she will get revenge in one fashion or another, and not only through the blows dispensed every day against a world that has been condemned. Because it was him, because it is us.
"Les mots et les balles" was originally published as an anonymous pamphlet in Paris in August 1984. Translated by NOT BORED! August 2003.
To read Herve-Claude Lapidaire's hostile review of "Words and Bullets," published on May 1985 by a newspaper that claimed to be "libertarian," click here.situa
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Ok jeg ved godt der ikke er nogen som læser denne blog. Men dette er endnu et mirakel. Som en overspringshandling sidder jeg og stener Basketball og så falder jeg over denne video: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/Video-Ron-Artest-lovable-badass?urn=nba-298898. For det første er Artest endnu en af de personer som ligesom Arenas kan kaldes et mirakel. For det andet er der en lille sød pige som siger det, meget klart, det er counter-intuitivt, at der i basketball skal findes de her personer som ikke er bange for at være sig selv... og kører det til grænsen. Men for det tredje og det er sgu lidt vanvittigt, så har Skeets engang boet hos mig. Dvs. ham der har lavet videoen har faktisk boet hjemme hos mig engang.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Lidt mere Arenas, mest til mig selv. En biografi
Joke all you want about the “great shooting” of Gilbert Arenas and the way he “triggers” an offense, but when you face the dynamic the All-Star guard in the open court, it’s no laughing matter. An exciting player and unique sports personality, he has been proving himself since arriving on the scene as an underappreciated second-round pick. Now, coming off a career-threatening knee injury—and potential career-ending brush with the law—Gilbert has more to prove than ever. This is his story…
GROWING UP
Gilbert Jay Arenas, Jr. was born on January 6, 1982 in Tampa, Florida. (Click here for a complete listing of today's sports birthdays.) His mother, a teenager at the time, was unprepared for parenthood. She tried to raise Gilbert by herself in Miami but started to hang out with some unsavory types and eventually got in trouble with the police. When the authorities became aware of young Gilbert’s plight, they made arrangements to place him in foster care.
Gilbert’s dad was working in an auto parts store in Tampa when the call came. As the boy’s natural father, he had rights. Normally, the call made to him is just a cursory contact, a formality to clear the child before moving him into a new home. But Gilbert Sr. thought about his own childhood—he grew up without a father—and decided to do the right thing. He assumed sole custody of his two-year-old son. Gilbert went 20 years before he saw his mother again.
Gilbert Sr. had big dreams. A baseball star at Florida Memorial College, he walked on to Howard Schnellenberger’s University of Miami football squad as a fullback in 1980. That was the season freshman quarterback Jim Kelly became the team’s starter and the Hurricanes won the Peach Bowl. Gilbert Sr.'s sports career ended that year, however, when he injured his leg.
A tall, good-looking man, Gilbert’s father got into modeling, appearing in ads for Sears and JC Penney. He eventually found his way into acting and appeared in the first two episodes of Miami Vice. When the show became a hit, he decided to leverage his 15 minutes of fame and moved to Los Angeles to further his career. He and his son packed everything they owned into his Mazda RX-7 and headed west.
When they arrived in Hollywood, they discovered the rental market worked a little differently than in Miami. Landlords were looking for $1,000 or more up front, which was more than Gilbert Sr. had saved. The pair spent three nights sleeping in the car in a Burbank parking lot before securing a room at a YMCA.
The first order of business for Gilbert Sr. was to find a steady job. He talked up the manager of a furniture store, who couldn’t help but notice the seven-year-old kid dribbling a basketball between his legs while he waited near the car. Because his new boss was a hoops fanatic, Gilbert Sr. got the job.
Later, Gilbert Sr. landed a night job with UPS. He would work until morning, catch a couple of hours of sleep while his son was in school, and go on auditions in the evenings. He hired an agent, who helped him get bits parts in TV shows, movies and commercials (including high-paying ones for Tostitos and Pepcid AC). Gilbert Sr. was relentless in his pursuit of work. He was imaginative, too. Once he got into a softball game with the Days of Our Lives team and and launched several long home runs. Soon he was playing a fireman on the soap.
Having an actor for a father could be interesting. Gilbert once brought a friend home, and his father kept shouting, “Kick his ass!” Gilbert had to explain that his father, who was due to shoot a scene the next day in Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Lionheart, was practicing his one line until he had it down perfectly.
Left to his own devices, Gilbert became the neighborhood pain in the ass, busting windows, keying cars and getting into minor trouble in a major way. He hated to be home alone and didn’t know how to unleash his boundless energy. He did well enough in school and learned how to charm his teachers with a big smile and a sly sense of humor. Still, without an outlet, Gilbert was headed for problems.
Around the age of 11, basketball replaced street football as Gilbert’s primary outlet. He played after school and, when his father left for the night shift at UPS, he would sneak out and ball it up all night. Before long, Gilbert became a familiar face on the local playgrounds. His father had an inkling of what he was doing and developed a network of friends in the area who would keep an eye on his son.
Jim Kelly, 1992 Pro Line
When the Arenas men did spend time together, their natural competitiveness came out. They often faced off in take-no-prisoners one-on-one basketball. During one game, Gilbert reached in to knock the ball away from his father, who cracked him on the hand and dislocated his finger. Watch Gilbert now and you can see that he almost never gets whistled for reaching in.
Gilbert Sr. coached a park league team, and since most of the boys were bigger and older than his son, he kept him on the bench. He explained to Gilbert that his goal was to win, not to give his son playing time. Gilbert quit, joined another team, and dropped 15 on his dad’s squad in their next meeting.
Gilbert also beat his dad at video football. When he explained the controls to his father, he neglected to enlighten him about all of the buttons. Gilbert Sr. found out, became furious and punched his son in the arm. They have never played video games again. Today, they still compete at pool, darts and dominoes.
ON THE RISE
Gilbert enrolled at nearby Birmingham High School and made the junior varsity. He was playing well, having a good time, and not taking the game too seriously—until the varsity coach cornered him to let him know he had reached his ceiling as a player.
That summer, Gilbert got up with the sun each morning and practiced until other players began showing up for games. He usually stayed at the court past dinner. In the fall, he transferred to Ulysses S. Grant High School in Van Nuys, a long bus ride away. It was worth it. The Lancers had a decent basketball team, though Grant was not a large school and its schedule included a couple of powder puff teams. Being young for his class at 14 and standing just 5-9, Gilbert did not yet have the look of a hoops superstar. He earned a starting role on coach Howard Levine’s varsity as a sophomore. Within a month, he blossomed into the best player in the league.
With a growing repertoire of slick one-on-one moves, Gilbert toyed with defenders. He could penetrate and score or pull up and hit from downtown. He was an adept passer, aggressive rebounder, and a defensive demon who could strip enemy dribblers or hammer balls back in a shooter’s face.
The game may have come naturally to Gilbert, but he was always practicing, always working on something new. He would often sneak back into his old elementary school and shoot for hours in the deserted gym. Gilbert was voted 1997 Valley Pac-8 Player of the Year as a sophomore, as well as Los Angeles All-City. He would earn these dual honors twice more, as a junior and senior.
After Gilbert’s junior year, during which he averaged just under 30 points a game, he applied to a math and science magnet school in Sylmar and joined that school’s summer league team. Now standing 6-3, Gilbert made the move to increase his level of competition. Sylmar played teams from Compton and Dominguez in the southern part of Los Angeles. Fearing he would lose his star, Levine hoped to convince Gilbert to stay at Grant. In the end, though he was accepted at Sylmar, Gilbert returned for his final season with the Lancers. (He would lead Grant to a share of the league title, while Sylmar went on to win the LA’s 3-A championship.)
At the start of Gilbert’s senior year, he wandered over to the UCLA campus and talked to the coaches. He and his dad had long dreamed of wearing a Bruins uniform. The school had shown some interest in him, and he wanted to more clarification. The deal, the Bruins told him, was that they were waiting to hear from Carlos Boozer (who eventually chose Duke). UCLA was also worried about Gilbert's attitude, believing he had run up the score on so-so opponents in high school. His academic record was a concern as well. Ultimately, the Bruins would regret their decision to pass on Gilbert. They had all sorts of trouble at shooting guard the next two years, while Gilbert torched them whenever he met them in the Pac-10.
Meanwhile, Gilbert also received solid offers from DePaul, Kansas State and Arizona. With Wildcats’ assistant Ray Tention hot on his trail, he chose to stay out west. Gilbert committed to Arizona and Lute Olson prior to his senior season at Grant, when he was still only 16-years-old. And what a season it was. Gilbert put up huge numbers, averaging 33.4 points, 7.9 rebounds, 3 assists and 4.6 steals.
Gilbert Arenas,
2003 Upper Deck Hardcourt
Gilbert joined an Arizona team that was rebuilding after losing Michael Dickerson, Mike Bibby and Miles Simon to the NBA a couple of years earlier. Olson, however, still had loads of talent, including Jason Gardner, Richard Jefferson, Loren Woods, Luke Walton and Michael Wright. The starter at shooting guard was Ruben Douglas, and Gilbert was asked to redshirt for a year. He didn’t think much of the plan. Gilbert once torched Douglas for 49 points in a high school game.
During Arizona’s informal summer games, Gilbert took nothing but pull-up jumpers. When real practices began, however, he pump-faked Douglas out of his jock. Gilbert had publicly stated that he hoped to start by the mid-point of his freshman year, and it was immediately clear that he would make good on this boast. Douglas ultimately transferred to New Mexico and topped the nation in scoring one season there.
In Gilbert's debut in an Arizona uniform, for the Blue team in the Pepsi Red-Blue pre-season scrimmage, he scored 22 points and hauled down five offensive rebounds in front of a raucous student crowd. A couple of weeks later, he was voted MVP of the pre-season NIT after pumping in 20 points and registering five steals against Kentucky in the championship game.
Gilbert's major adjustment to Division I competition was learning what to do without the ball. At Grant, he always had the rock or was always about to get it. Working off screens and getting himself open for good looks at the basket was a tough transition. When he got the ball, however, he knew what to do with it. In his first game against UCLA, Gilbert victimized the Bruins for 20 points. Days later, he was named PAC-10 Player of the Week.
Off the court, Gilbert found an interesting role with the Wildcats: class clown. He kept his teammates loose and tried to crack them up when the super-serious Olson had his back turned. It wasn’t that Gilbert did not like or respect his coach; he simply thought he could be too demanding and inflexible. Olson discouraged his freshman from showboating, insisting he display class at all times.
Olson’s wife, Bobbi, was just the opposite. The unofficial team mother, she went out of her way to make Gilbert feel at home. Coupled with the free and easy lifestyle of the Arizona campus, freshman year was as close to perfect as he could imagine.
Gilbert was an excellent fit for Arizona’s up-tempo style, and he came up big at both ends game after game. He scored 15.4 points per game on 45.3% shooting from the field. He was also a terror on defense, averaging two steals a contest.
Arizona entered the NCAA Tournament as a #1 seed, but the team was beat up from hard regular season. Jefferson was coming back from a stress fracture in his foot and was not yet playing at full speed. Woods, the key man in the middle, was sidelined by an aching back.
In their opener, the Wildcats appeared tight against Jackson State. They led by only eight points at intermission. Arizona found its rhythm in the second half, pulling away for a 71-47 win. Next up was a dangerous Wisconsin squad, which specialized in slowing down teams like the Wildcats. This the Badgers did, building a double-digit lead and thwarting every comeback attempt that Arizona could muster. Gilbert was high man with 21 points, but the Wildcats lost, 66-59. It was small consolation that the Badgers continued to roll all the way to the Final Four.
Despite Arizona's early exit during March Madness, the 2000-01 preseason polls had the Wildcats ranked among the best in the nation. Some believed they were Final Four material. Privately, the players thought they could go undefeated. Then the news about Bobbi Olson came—she was dying of cancer. The coach was devastated, as were his players. Her illness was kept out of the papers, but the team got off to a terrible start. Everyone around basketball knew something was wrong. Bobbi died on New Year’s Day.
Gilbert and his teammates chose to honor her memory by dedicating their season to her. Energized and inspired, they won 20 of their next 23 games. Gilbert was fantastic, burning opponents off the dribble and extending his range well past the the 3-point line. For the year, he upped his scoring to 16.5 ppg, and at 42.5%, he was deadly from beyond the arc. Gilbert also stepped up his defensive effort—though this was a result of being benched by Olson for poor practice habits.
Richard Jefferson, 2002 HIT
The Wildcats headed into the NCAA Tournament like a team on a mission. Gilbert was on fire in the opening game against Eastern Illinois, nailing nine of 13 shots from the field for 21 points in a 101-76 win. Next, Arizona choked off upstart Butler, 73-52. Gilbert netted 15 in the tilt, along with eight rebounds.
It looked like the championship run would end in the Sweet Sixteen against Mississippi, as the Rebels opened an 18-6 lead. But Arizona caught up early in the second half and—led by 16 points and 11 rebounds from Woods—and the Wildcats cruised to a 66-56 win. In the Midwest Final against Illinois, Gilbert scored 16 of Arizona’s first 24 points. He finished with 21. Gardner, meanwhile, hit clutch threes and foul shots in the waning minutes for an 87-81 victory. The Wildcats earned their first trip to the Final Four since their national title in 1997.
In the national semifinal, a win over Michigan State, Gilbert stunned the Spartans with six steals. On one of those thefts, Zach Randolph crashed into his chest. Two days later, when he took the floor against Duke for the championship, Gilbert was still feeling intense pain. That morning, he didn’t think he could get out of bed, much less suit up. But there was no way he was going to miss a shot at the national title.
The Wildcats and Blue Devils tangled in an exciting final, which fans in Carolina remember for the brilliant all-around performance of Shane Battier. Arizona fans still fume about because of questionable officiating. Duke guard Jason Williams played recklessly throughout the game, initiating contact at both ends of the floor, yet the referees rarely whistled him for fouls. The Blue Devils outlasted the Wildcats, 82-72.
Afterwards, Gilbert decided to enter the NBA draft, along with Jefferson, Gardner and Wright. Olson went on record saying that Gilbert was too young. But he felt that he had tested himself against the best the NCAA had to offer. To his mind, Gilbert had proved he would make a top pro.
Was Gilbert ready? Although he led Arizona in scoring, many scouts considered him too young, skinny and inexperienced to be an impact player at shooting guard and too basket-happy to play the point. When Gilbert scanned the talent available in the draft, however, he thought he might go in the lottery. It soon became clear he was wrong.
Gilbert Sr. threw a draft day party for his son in Studio City. After 20 picks had passed and his name had not been called, Gilbert called the coach who had recruited him out of high school. He wanted to know if there was any way he could undo the damage. Could someone call David Stern? Gilbert was panicked and crying—the first time he had shed tears since he was a child. That's when he heard some good news. The Golden State Warriors had taken him in the second round, with the 31st pick overall.
Gilbert collected himself and made the same prediction he had three springs earlier: I’m going to start by mid-season. Then he headed to the gym to work out.
Gilbert arrived at training camp slotted behind first-round pick Jason Richardson and backup Bob Sura. Coach Brian Winters was not a fan of underclassmen in the NBA and promised to keep Gilbert on the pine regardless of the team’s record. The rookie practiced hard, got into a handful of blowouts, learned what he could from watching, and mostly kept his opinions to himself. Besides youngsters Richardson, Larry Hughes and Antawn Jamison, the Warriors were light on talent, and Winters had a hard time coaxing big efforts out of his players. The result was a dismal 21-win season.
Gilbert stayed sharp in practice. He managed to get a key to Golden State's facility so he could work on his game at night. He also played a lot of pickup games in the local playgrounds in defiance of his $850,000 contract. Gilbert reasoned that this was the only action he would see where guys came at him ferociously. And they did. Everyone wanted a shot at NBA meat, and Gilbert obliged them.
Still, he sat. When the teams were announced for the Got Milk Rookie Game, Gilbert’s name was nowhere to be found. It frustrated him to watch the contest, mostly because he had destroyed so many of the players in college. Gilbert became even more determined to be ready when his chance finally came. (He suited up for the sophomore squad the following year and was named MVP).
2001 Sports Illustrated, Final Four issue
With Hughes struggling at the point and the playoffs out of range, Winters asked Gilbert if he would like to try his hand running the offense. He had never been interested in playing point guard, but minutes were minutes, and he had seen precious few to that point.
Learning on the job, Gilbert dished out 3.7 assists and scored over 10 points a game the rest of the way. It wasn’t always pretty. When in doubt, Gilbert just turned on the jets and outran his defenders. Sometimes he raced into traps, but at other times he created great opportunities for his teammates. When all was said and done, Gilbert finished fourth in scoring and third in assists and steals among NBA rookies—despite starting just 30 games. In those starts, he averaged 14.1 points and 5.1 assists.
During a trip to Miami for a game against the Heat during his rookie year, Gilbert finally met his mother again. He had imagined an emotional reunion, but when she introduced herself neither knew what to do or say.
Over the summer, the Warriors unloaded Hughes, Blaylock and Dean Oliver, and drafted Mike Dunleavy instead of Jay Williams—which basically gave the point guard job to Gilbert. He took a crash course in the position, watching tapes of former Wildcats Mike Bibby and Damon Stoudamire. When the 2002-03 season started, he was not only prepared to run the point, he was expecting to lead the Warriors to victory every game.
MAKING HIS MARK
With the offense now in his hands, Gilbert was very serious about his job. Happy-go-lucky off the court, he became increasingly frustrated. The Warriors lost 44 games in '02-03, and a lot were decided by the end of the second quarter. Gilbert unleashed his anger at officials, racking up a lot of technicals, but he held his tongue with teammates—though sometimes he had to take halftime showers (in full uniform) to cool off. Gilbert also smashed his share of clipboards and threw his share of chairs. Richardson nicknamed him “Baby Ron Artest.”
Gilbert appeared in all 82 contests for the Warriors and finished with excellent numbers, including 18.3 points per game and 6.3 assists. He logged nearly 3,000 minutes and answered any questions about whether he could be a productive NBA player. At season’s end, he was voted the the league’s Most Improved Player, beating out fellow point guards Chauncey Billups and Tony Parker.
Gilbert’s emergence thrilled Golden State fans—until it exposed an interesting loophole in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. Because he was a second-round pick, Gilbert was not only eligible for early-bird free agency, but the Warriors were not allowed to offer him more than the average salary of $4.6 million to stay in a Golden State uniform. In order to keep Gilbert, the team would have had to gut its roster. The Bay Area faithful went crazy when they found out they were likely to lose Gilbert. Many launched web sites supporting him and urging the Warriors to find a way to keep him.
Ultimately, however, it was the Washington Wizards that put the best deal on the table—six years at $65 million. Having closed the books on the Michael Jordan era, the team’s new coach, Eddie Jordan, and new GM, Ernie Grunfeld, wanted to rebuild around a nucleus of exciting young talent. Already in the fold were Hughes and Kwame Brown, the top pick in the 2001 draft. Jerry Stackhouse, recovering from knee surgery, would serve as a veteran presence once he returned to action.
Gilbert blossomed in his new surroundings in the 2003-04 campaign, scoring a triple-double in his forth game as a Wizard. His goal each time down the floor was to get into the paint and either go to the rim or dish off. He also became adept at shooting off pick-and-rolls and screens. After a couple of months, NBA defenders learned that they were better off laying back and conceding the 20-foot jumper. This is where Gilbert got into a trouble sometimes. A streaky shooter, he rarely passed when he was feeling it and subsequently took his teammates out of the offense. When the shot wasn’t there, his fellow Wizards did not always move without the ball. Coach Jordan encouraged Gilbert to think about scoring but reminded him he also had to ignite the offense in other ways.
At season’s end, the Wizards had just 25 wins, but the team’s fortunes were looking up. Hughes stayed relatively healthy and played well, Stackhouse contributed after his February return, and role players Brendan Haywood, Juan Dixon, Etan Thomas and Jarvis Hayes logged valuable minutes. Gilbert led the Wizards in scoring at 19.6 ppg and reached the 40-point plateau twice. In a game against the Lakers, he equaled the franchise mark with eight three-pointers.
Gilbert Arenas, 2002 Bowman Chrome
Gilbert’s growing friendship with Hughes was another important part of his development. The NBA’s version of the “Odd Couple,” the two young stars found plenty of common ground, both on and off the court. Gilbert was the smiling, gregarious guy who wore his emotions on his sleeve. Hughes was the quiet, serious type, who liked his privacy, his family, and the occasional night out with a rap star.
They say every successful NBA team needs three go-to guys. In Gilbert and Hughes, Washington believed it had two. Prior to the 2004-05 season, Grunfeld picked up a third—another ex-Warrior, Jamison. The trio performed as hoped, with Gilbert and Jamison making the All-Star squad and Hughes leading the league in steals and being named to the NBA All-Defensive First Team. Though s everal players battled injuries—including Hughes, who missed 20 games with a broken finger, and Brown, with a broken foot—talent and teamwork steadied the boat whenever it reached troubled waters. The Wizards went 45-37 to finish with their best record in 26 years.
Gilbert ended the year averaging 25.5 points, 5.1 assists and 4.7 rebounds a game. With Hughes going for 22 a night, Washington featured the highest-scoring backcourt in the league.
Washington’s #5 seed in the playoffs earned them a shot at the young Chicago Bulls, who ambushed the Wizards in the first two games of the series. Washington came back to knot the series and seemed to have Game 5 locked up when the Bulls made a 10-0 run to even the score 110-110 with five seconds left. Gilbert responded with a dramatic buzzer-beater for the victory.
In Game 6, Gilbert was ice cold, but he made the game-turning play on defense. With two minutes left and Chicago up by four, Kirk Hinrich stole the ball from Hughes and drove the other way all alone. Gilbert broke toward his basket as soon as he saw the play developing and soared through the air to tip Hinrich's shot away. The defensive gem ignited a 7-0 run for Washington, which triumphed 94-91.
Next up were Shaquille O’Neal, Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat. Without a solid center, the Wizards were helpless against Shaq, and no one could stop Wade, either. Miami took the first three games easily. In Game 4, the Wizards found themselves on the short end again, down 13 points in the fourth quarter, their season just minutes away from its conclusion. But with one last, great gasp, Washington pulled it together and roared back into the lead—though only for a moment. The Wizards lost, 99-95.
Larry Hughes, 2001 Heritage
Gilbert and Jamison were joined for the 2005–06 season by Caron Butler, who was acquired from the Lakers for Kwame Brown. Together they formed the NBA’s top-scoring trio, with Gilbert netting 29.3 a game followed by Jamison (20.5) and Butler (17.6). Gilbert was also among the league leaders in steals and assists. Somehow, he was overlooked by the fans when the All-Star ballots were tallied. He did made it in as an injury sub for Jermaine O’Neal.
The Wizards finished strong and snagged a playoff berth with a 42–40 record. They were the highest-scoring team in the East. Unfortunately, they had to play the surging Cavaliers, a 50-win team led by LeBron James. Cleveland took a 2–1 lead in the series after Gilbert missed a game-winning 3-pointer in Game 3. He redeemed himself in Game 4 by exploding for 20 in the fourth quarter to even the series.
Alas, the Wizards couldn't hold back the Cavaliers, who took the series in six. The last two wins were one-point heartbreakers in overtime. Gilbert sent Game 6 into OT with a 30-foot buzzer-beater, but later he missed two free throws that allowed the Cavs to score the winning bucket.
Gilbert was certain that Washington was just a player or two away from having a dominant club. During the off-season, he offered to take a pay cut if the team used it to secure a key free agent or two. The team did sign two players—Darius Songaila and DeShawn Stevenson—but they were hardly difference-makers in 2006–07.
Gilbert definitely was, however. Time and again he hit long jumpers or driving layups in the waning moments of games to give the Wizards a victory, or at least keep them alive. In a December meeting with Kobe Bryant and the Lakers, Gilbert exploded for 60 points. The Wizards won 147–141 in overtime, and Gilbert smashed Earl Boykins's NBA record for points in an overtime period, dropping 16 on LA.
Performances like these enabled Gilbert to average around 30 points a game in the early going, and this proved enough for him to out-ballot Vince Carter for a starting spot in the All-Star Game. Butler, who was also having a nice year, made his All-Star Game debut as well.
As usuual, there was plenty of drama in Gilbert’s basketball life. After he was left off the roster for the FIBA World Championship, he vowed to make Team USA director Jerry Colangelo pay. When the Wizards played the Phoenix Suns, Gilbert lit them up for 54 points and glared at Colangelo throughout the game.
The season seemed to be heading in the right direction for Washington until second-half injuries began to diminish the starting five. The critical blow was a season-ending knee injury for Gilbert, suffered in an April collision with Gerald Wallace of the Charlotte Bobcats. The Wizards squeezed into the playoffs, but they were swept by the Cavs in the first round.
G’ilberts knee injury, a torn left MCL, robbed him of almost two entire seasons. He also underwent micro-fracture surgery. Gilbert made a total of 10 starts in 2007–08 and 2008–09. The Wizards did an admirable job the first year, finishing with a winning record (followed by another first-round loss to the Cavs). In year two of Gilbert’s absence, the team fell apart. Washington lost 63 games, tying the franchise record for futilty.
Caron Butler, 2007 Upper Deck
Gilbert was finally back in playing shape for the 2009–10 season. New coach Flip Saunders also had Jamison and Butler in the lineup, along with newly acquired role players Mike Miller and Randy Foye. Gilbert was getting his 20-plus a night and doing double-duty as Washington's de facto point guard, but the club was losing regularly and was mired in the Southeast Division cellar.
During the Christmas holidays, news began trickling out of the Verizon Center that Gilbert had brought three unloaded guns into the Washington locker room. Later it was revealed that he and Javaris Crittendon had been waving guns at each other in a dispute over gambling debts. This happened a month after beloved longtime owner Abe Pollin—who changed the team's name from Bullets to remove the taint of gun violence—had passed away. And of course it was not Gilbert’s first association with firearms. As a young player in Golden State, he was also caught with an improperly registered weapon in his possession.
When local cops and federal investigators got involved, Gilbert stopped talking. Prior to that, however, he had attempted to shade the incident as an all-in-fun tussle between teammates. He explained the presence of the guns—a violation of NBA rules and DC law—by saying he had brought them to work from his home in Virginia so his kids wouldn't get them. Gilbert also issued a public apology.
Bad things do happen to good people, and by all accounts Gilbert is a decent guy. The gun incident won't define him as a person or player, but it may bring him into the crosshairs of the NBA, which could use him as an example for other potential gun-toting stars. The league, in fact, suspended him indefinitely. A long suspension during a comeback season is not what Gilbert needed. Nor is a legal hassle over the morals clause in NBA playing agreements—which would give the Wizards a convenient out of a top-heavy contract.
The bigger problem for Gilbert may be DC's strict gun laws. There normally isn’t much room to manuever with authorities. There is a chance he could face jail time.
Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain. Gilbert always takes the court feeling he has something to prove. Having cemented his reputation as one of basketball’s most dynamic scorers, he must now lift a talented but often aimless club from mediocrity to the exalted status of a conference power—and live down the inevitable jokes as one of the NBA’s true gunners.
GILBERT THE PLAYER
Javaris Crittenton, 2008 Topps
Very few NBA stars can legitimately boast Gilbert's combination of skills. He has excellent range on his jumper, can nail the mid-range pull-up and can dunk over most players in the league. As a point guard, his penetrate-and-pass style works well with slashers like Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler.
Even post-surgery, Gilbert is a relentless attacker. Whether he is hot or cold, he comes at opponenets the same way. Unafraid of fellow guards, he instead studies the defensive tendencies of the forwards and centers he is likely to encounter after shaking off his primary defender. He jumps into the shot-blockers and pulls up against the wide-body defenders, ensuring him either of a trip to the foul line or an open look at the rim.
Gilbert is a smart defender who is conscious of beating his man to a spot, and he rarely reaches in to pick up cheap fouls. Most of his steals come from playing the passing lanes. He has also become adept at slapping the ball away from big men when they put it on the floor.
Gilbert has shown the ability to lead his team, but he also provide unnecessary distractions at times. No one disputes his talent. But critics question whether he has the mental make-up to win a championship.
GROWING UP
Gilbert Jay Arenas, Jr. was born on January 6, 1982 in Tampa, Florida. (Click here for a complete listing of today's sports birthdays.) His mother, a teenager at the time, was unprepared for parenthood. She tried to raise Gilbert by herself in Miami but started to hang out with some unsavory types and eventually got in trouble with the police. When the authorities became aware of young Gilbert’s plight, they made arrangements to place him in foster care.
Gilbert’s dad was working in an auto parts store in Tampa when the call came. As the boy’s natural father, he had rights. Normally, the call made to him is just a cursory contact, a formality to clear the child before moving him into a new home. But Gilbert Sr. thought about his own childhood—he grew up without a father—and decided to do the right thing. He assumed sole custody of his two-year-old son. Gilbert went 20 years before he saw his mother again.
Gilbert Sr. had big dreams. A baseball star at Florida Memorial College, he walked on to Howard Schnellenberger’s University of Miami football squad as a fullback in 1980. That was the season freshman quarterback Jim Kelly became the team’s starter and the Hurricanes won the Peach Bowl. Gilbert Sr.'s sports career ended that year, however, when he injured his leg.
A tall, good-looking man, Gilbert’s father got into modeling, appearing in ads for Sears and JC Penney. He eventually found his way into acting and appeared in the first two episodes of Miami Vice. When the show became a hit, he decided to leverage his 15 minutes of fame and moved to Los Angeles to further his career. He and his son packed everything they owned into his Mazda RX-7 and headed west.
When they arrived in Hollywood, they discovered the rental market worked a little differently than in Miami. Landlords were looking for $1,000 or more up front, which was more than Gilbert Sr. had saved. The pair spent three nights sleeping in the car in a Burbank parking lot before securing a room at a YMCA.
The first order of business for Gilbert Sr. was to find a steady job. He talked up the manager of a furniture store, who couldn’t help but notice the seven-year-old kid dribbling a basketball between his legs while he waited near the car. Because his new boss was a hoops fanatic, Gilbert Sr. got the job.
Later, Gilbert Sr. landed a night job with UPS. He would work until morning, catch a couple of hours of sleep while his son was in school, and go on auditions in the evenings. He hired an agent, who helped him get bits parts in TV shows, movies and commercials (including high-paying ones for Tostitos and Pepcid AC). Gilbert Sr. was relentless in his pursuit of work. He was imaginative, too. Once he got into a softball game with the Days of Our Lives team and and launched several long home runs. Soon he was playing a fireman on the soap.
Having an actor for a father could be interesting. Gilbert once brought a friend home, and his father kept shouting, “Kick his ass!” Gilbert had to explain that his father, who was due to shoot a scene the next day in Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Lionheart, was practicing his one line until he had it down perfectly.
Left to his own devices, Gilbert became the neighborhood pain in the ass, busting windows, keying cars and getting into minor trouble in a major way. He hated to be home alone and didn’t know how to unleash his boundless energy. He did well enough in school and learned how to charm his teachers with a big smile and a sly sense of humor. Still, without an outlet, Gilbert was headed for problems.
Around the age of 11, basketball replaced street football as Gilbert’s primary outlet. He played after school and, when his father left for the night shift at UPS, he would sneak out and ball it up all night. Before long, Gilbert became a familiar face on the local playgrounds. His father had an inkling of what he was doing and developed a network of friends in the area who would keep an eye on his son.
Jim Kelly, 1992 Pro Line
When the Arenas men did spend time together, their natural competitiveness came out. They often faced off in take-no-prisoners one-on-one basketball. During one game, Gilbert reached in to knock the ball away from his father, who cracked him on the hand and dislocated his finger. Watch Gilbert now and you can see that he almost never gets whistled for reaching in.
Gilbert Sr. coached a park league team, and since most of the boys were bigger and older than his son, he kept him on the bench. He explained to Gilbert that his goal was to win, not to give his son playing time. Gilbert quit, joined another team, and dropped 15 on his dad’s squad in their next meeting.
Gilbert also beat his dad at video football. When he explained the controls to his father, he neglected to enlighten him about all of the buttons. Gilbert Sr. found out, became furious and punched his son in the arm. They have never played video games again. Today, they still compete at pool, darts and dominoes.
ON THE RISE
Gilbert enrolled at nearby Birmingham High School and made the junior varsity. He was playing well, having a good time, and not taking the game too seriously—until the varsity coach cornered him to let him know he had reached his ceiling as a player.
That summer, Gilbert got up with the sun each morning and practiced until other players began showing up for games. He usually stayed at the court past dinner. In the fall, he transferred to Ulysses S. Grant High School in Van Nuys, a long bus ride away. It was worth it. The Lancers had a decent basketball team, though Grant was not a large school and its schedule included a couple of powder puff teams. Being young for his class at 14 and standing just 5-9, Gilbert did not yet have the look of a hoops superstar. He earned a starting role on coach Howard Levine’s varsity as a sophomore. Within a month, he blossomed into the best player in the league.
With a growing repertoire of slick one-on-one moves, Gilbert toyed with defenders. He could penetrate and score or pull up and hit from downtown. He was an adept passer, aggressive rebounder, and a defensive demon who could strip enemy dribblers or hammer balls back in a shooter’s face.
The game may have come naturally to Gilbert, but he was always practicing, always working on something new. He would often sneak back into his old elementary school and shoot for hours in the deserted gym. Gilbert was voted 1997 Valley Pac-8 Player of the Year as a sophomore, as well as Los Angeles All-City. He would earn these dual honors twice more, as a junior and senior.
After Gilbert’s junior year, during which he averaged just under 30 points a game, he applied to a math and science magnet school in Sylmar and joined that school’s summer league team. Now standing 6-3, Gilbert made the move to increase his level of competition. Sylmar played teams from Compton and Dominguez in the southern part of Los Angeles. Fearing he would lose his star, Levine hoped to convince Gilbert to stay at Grant. In the end, though he was accepted at Sylmar, Gilbert returned for his final season with the Lancers. (He would lead Grant to a share of the league title, while Sylmar went on to win the LA’s 3-A championship.)
At the start of Gilbert’s senior year, he wandered over to the UCLA campus and talked to the coaches. He and his dad had long dreamed of wearing a Bruins uniform. The school had shown some interest in him, and he wanted to more clarification. The deal, the Bruins told him, was that they were waiting to hear from Carlos Boozer (who eventually chose Duke). UCLA was also worried about Gilbert's attitude, believing he had run up the score on so-so opponents in high school. His academic record was a concern as well. Ultimately, the Bruins would regret their decision to pass on Gilbert. They had all sorts of trouble at shooting guard the next two years, while Gilbert torched them whenever he met them in the Pac-10.
Meanwhile, Gilbert also received solid offers from DePaul, Kansas State and Arizona. With Wildcats’ assistant Ray Tention hot on his trail, he chose to stay out west. Gilbert committed to Arizona and Lute Olson prior to his senior season at Grant, when he was still only 16-years-old. And what a season it was. Gilbert put up huge numbers, averaging 33.4 points, 7.9 rebounds, 3 assists and 4.6 steals.
Gilbert Arenas,
2003 Upper Deck Hardcourt
Gilbert joined an Arizona team that was rebuilding after losing Michael Dickerson, Mike Bibby and Miles Simon to the NBA a couple of years earlier. Olson, however, still had loads of talent, including Jason Gardner, Richard Jefferson, Loren Woods, Luke Walton and Michael Wright. The starter at shooting guard was Ruben Douglas, and Gilbert was asked to redshirt for a year. He didn’t think much of the plan. Gilbert once torched Douglas for 49 points in a high school game.
During Arizona’s informal summer games, Gilbert took nothing but pull-up jumpers. When real practices began, however, he pump-faked Douglas out of his jock. Gilbert had publicly stated that he hoped to start by the mid-point of his freshman year, and it was immediately clear that he would make good on this boast. Douglas ultimately transferred to New Mexico and topped the nation in scoring one season there.
In Gilbert's debut in an Arizona uniform, for the Blue team in the Pepsi Red-Blue pre-season scrimmage, he scored 22 points and hauled down five offensive rebounds in front of a raucous student crowd. A couple of weeks later, he was voted MVP of the pre-season NIT after pumping in 20 points and registering five steals against Kentucky in the championship game.
Gilbert's major adjustment to Division I competition was learning what to do without the ball. At Grant, he always had the rock or was always about to get it. Working off screens and getting himself open for good looks at the basket was a tough transition. When he got the ball, however, he knew what to do with it. In his first game against UCLA, Gilbert victimized the Bruins for 20 points. Days later, he was named PAC-10 Player of the Week.
Off the court, Gilbert found an interesting role with the Wildcats: class clown. He kept his teammates loose and tried to crack them up when the super-serious Olson had his back turned. It wasn’t that Gilbert did not like or respect his coach; he simply thought he could be too demanding and inflexible. Olson discouraged his freshman from showboating, insisting he display class at all times.
Olson’s wife, Bobbi, was just the opposite. The unofficial team mother, she went out of her way to make Gilbert feel at home. Coupled with the free and easy lifestyle of the Arizona campus, freshman year was as close to perfect as he could imagine.
Gilbert was an excellent fit for Arizona’s up-tempo style, and he came up big at both ends game after game. He scored 15.4 points per game on 45.3% shooting from the field. He was also a terror on defense, averaging two steals a contest.
Arizona entered the NCAA Tournament as a #1 seed, but the team was beat up from hard regular season. Jefferson was coming back from a stress fracture in his foot and was not yet playing at full speed. Woods, the key man in the middle, was sidelined by an aching back.
In their opener, the Wildcats appeared tight against Jackson State. They led by only eight points at intermission. Arizona found its rhythm in the second half, pulling away for a 71-47 win. Next up was a dangerous Wisconsin squad, which specialized in slowing down teams like the Wildcats. This the Badgers did, building a double-digit lead and thwarting every comeback attempt that Arizona could muster. Gilbert was high man with 21 points, but the Wildcats lost, 66-59. It was small consolation that the Badgers continued to roll all the way to the Final Four.
Despite Arizona's early exit during March Madness, the 2000-01 preseason polls had the Wildcats ranked among the best in the nation. Some believed they were Final Four material. Privately, the players thought they could go undefeated. Then the news about Bobbi Olson came—she was dying of cancer. The coach was devastated, as were his players. Her illness was kept out of the papers, but the team got off to a terrible start. Everyone around basketball knew something was wrong. Bobbi died on New Year’s Day.
Gilbert and his teammates chose to honor her memory by dedicating their season to her. Energized and inspired, they won 20 of their next 23 games. Gilbert was fantastic, burning opponents off the dribble and extending his range well past the the 3-point line. For the year, he upped his scoring to 16.5 ppg, and at 42.5%, he was deadly from beyond the arc. Gilbert also stepped up his defensive effort—though this was a result of being benched by Olson for poor practice habits.
Richard Jefferson, 2002 HIT
The Wildcats headed into the NCAA Tournament like a team on a mission. Gilbert was on fire in the opening game against Eastern Illinois, nailing nine of 13 shots from the field for 21 points in a 101-76 win. Next, Arizona choked off upstart Butler, 73-52. Gilbert netted 15 in the tilt, along with eight rebounds.
It looked like the championship run would end in the Sweet Sixteen against Mississippi, as the Rebels opened an 18-6 lead. But Arizona caught up early in the second half and—led by 16 points and 11 rebounds from Woods—and the Wildcats cruised to a 66-56 win. In the Midwest Final against Illinois, Gilbert scored 16 of Arizona’s first 24 points. He finished with 21. Gardner, meanwhile, hit clutch threes and foul shots in the waning minutes for an 87-81 victory. The Wildcats earned their first trip to the Final Four since their national title in 1997.
In the national semifinal, a win over Michigan State, Gilbert stunned the Spartans with six steals. On one of those thefts, Zach Randolph crashed into his chest. Two days later, when he took the floor against Duke for the championship, Gilbert was still feeling intense pain. That morning, he didn’t think he could get out of bed, much less suit up. But there was no way he was going to miss a shot at the national title.
The Wildcats and Blue Devils tangled in an exciting final, which fans in Carolina remember for the brilliant all-around performance of Shane Battier. Arizona fans still fume about because of questionable officiating. Duke guard Jason Williams played recklessly throughout the game, initiating contact at both ends of the floor, yet the referees rarely whistled him for fouls. The Blue Devils outlasted the Wildcats, 82-72.
Afterwards, Gilbert decided to enter the NBA draft, along with Jefferson, Gardner and Wright. Olson went on record saying that Gilbert was too young. But he felt that he had tested himself against the best the NCAA had to offer. To his mind, Gilbert had proved he would make a top pro.
Was Gilbert ready? Although he led Arizona in scoring, many scouts considered him too young, skinny and inexperienced to be an impact player at shooting guard and too basket-happy to play the point. When Gilbert scanned the talent available in the draft, however, he thought he might go in the lottery. It soon became clear he was wrong.
Gilbert Sr. threw a draft day party for his son in Studio City. After 20 picks had passed and his name had not been called, Gilbert called the coach who had recruited him out of high school. He wanted to know if there was any way he could undo the damage. Could someone call David Stern? Gilbert was panicked and crying—the first time he had shed tears since he was a child. That's when he heard some good news. The Golden State Warriors had taken him in the second round, with the 31st pick overall.
Gilbert collected himself and made the same prediction he had three springs earlier: I’m going to start by mid-season. Then he headed to the gym to work out.
Gilbert arrived at training camp slotted behind first-round pick Jason Richardson and backup Bob Sura. Coach Brian Winters was not a fan of underclassmen in the NBA and promised to keep Gilbert on the pine regardless of the team’s record. The rookie practiced hard, got into a handful of blowouts, learned what he could from watching, and mostly kept his opinions to himself. Besides youngsters Richardson, Larry Hughes and Antawn Jamison, the Warriors were light on talent, and Winters had a hard time coaxing big efforts out of his players. The result was a dismal 21-win season.
Gilbert stayed sharp in practice. He managed to get a key to Golden State's facility so he could work on his game at night. He also played a lot of pickup games in the local playgrounds in defiance of his $850,000 contract. Gilbert reasoned that this was the only action he would see where guys came at him ferociously. And they did. Everyone wanted a shot at NBA meat, and Gilbert obliged them.
Still, he sat. When the teams were announced for the Got Milk Rookie Game, Gilbert’s name was nowhere to be found. It frustrated him to watch the contest, mostly because he had destroyed so many of the players in college. Gilbert became even more determined to be ready when his chance finally came. (He suited up for the sophomore squad the following year and was named MVP).
2001 Sports Illustrated, Final Four issue
With Hughes struggling at the point and the playoffs out of range, Winters asked Gilbert if he would like to try his hand running the offense. He had never been interested in playing point guard, but minutes were minutes, and he had seen precious few to that point.
Learning on the job, Gilbert dished out 3.7 assists and scored over 10 points a game the rest of the way. It wasn’t always pretty. When in doubt, Gilbert just turned on the jets and outran his defenders. Sometimes he raced into traps, but at other times he created great opportunities for his teammates. When all was said and done, Gilbert finished fourth in scoring and third in assists and steals among NBA rookies—despite starting just 30 games. In those starts, he averaged 14.1 points and 5.1 assists.
During a trip to Miami for a game against the Heat during his rookie year, Gilbert finally met his mother again. He had imagined an emotional reunion, but when she introduced herself neither knew what to do or say.
Over the summer, the Warriors unloaded Hughes, Blaylock and Dean Oliver, and drafted Mike Dunleavy instead of Jay Williams—which basically gave the point guard job to Gilbert. He took a crash course in the position, watching tapes of former Wildcats Mike Bibby and Damon Stoudamire. When the 2002-03 season started, he was not only prepared to run the point, he was expecting to lead the Warriors to victory every game.
MAKING HIS MARK
With the offense now in his hands, Gilbert was very serious about his job. Happy-go-lucky off the court, he became increasingly frustrated. The Warriors lost 44 games in '02-03, and a lot were decided by the end of the second quarter. Gilbert unleashed his anger at officials, racking up a lot of technicals, but he held his tongue with teammates—though sometimes he had to take halftime showers (in full uniform) to cool off. Gilbert also smashed his share of clipboards and threw his share of chairs. Richardson nicknamed him “Baby Ron Artest.”
Gilbert appeared in all 82 contests for the Warriors and finished with excellent numbers, including 18.3 points per game and 6.3 assists. He logged nearly 3,000 minutes and answered any questions about whether he could be a productive NBA player. At season’s end, he was voted the the league’s Most Improved Player, beating out fellow point guards Chauncey Billups and Tony Parker.
Gilbert’s emergence thrilled Golden State fans—until it exposed an interesting loophole in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. Because he was a second-round pick, Gilbert was not only eligible for early-bird free agency, but the Warriors were not allowed to offer him more than the average salary of $4.6 million to stay in a Golden State uniform. In order to keep Gilbert, the team would have had to gut its roster. The Bay Area faithful went crazy when they found out they were likely to lose Gilbert. Many launched web sites supporting him and urging the Warriors to find a way to keep him.
Ultimately, however, it was the Washington Wizards that put the best deal on the table—six years at $65 million. Having closed the books on the Michael Jordan era, the team’s new coach, Eddie Jordan, and new GM, Ernie Grunfeld, wanted to rebuild around a nucleus of exciting young talent. Already in the fold were Hughes and Kwame Brown, the top pick in the 2001 draft. Jerry Stackhouse, recovering from knee surgery, would serve as a veteran presence once he returned to action.
Gilbert blossomed in his new surroundings in the 2003-04 campaign, scoring a triple-double in his forth game as a Wizard. His goal each time down the floor was to get into the paint and either go to the rim or dish off. He also became adept at shooting off pick-and-rolls and screens. After a couple of months, NBA defenders learned that they were better off laying back and conceding the 20-foot jumper. This is where Gilbert got into a trouble sometimes. A streaky shooter, he rarely passed when he was feeling it and subsequently took his teammates out of the offense. When the shot wasn’t there, his fellow Wizards did not always move without the ball. Coach Jordan encouraged Gilbert to think about scoring but reminded him he also had to ignite the offense in other ways.
At season’s end, the Wizards had just 25 wins, but the team’s fortunes were looking up. Hughes stayed relatively healthy and played well, Stackhouse contributed after his February return, and role players Brendan Haywood, Juan Dixon, Etan Thomas and Jarvis Hayes logged valuable minutes. Gilbert led the Wizards in scoring at 19.6 ppg and reached the 40-point plateau twice. In a game against the Lakers, he equaled the franchise mark with eight three-pointers.
Gilbert Arenas, 2002 Bowman Chrome
Gilbert’s growing friendship with Hughes was another important part of his development. The NBA’s version of the “Odd Couple,” the two young stars found plenty of common ground, both on and off the court. Gilbert was the smiling, gregarious guy who wore his emotions on his sleeve. Hughes was the quiet, serious type, who liked his privacy, his family, and the occasional night out with a rap star.
They say every successful NBA team needs three go-to guys. In Gilbert and Hughes, Washington believed it had two. Prior to the 2004-05 season, Grunfeld picked up a third—another ex-Warrior, Jamison. The trio performed as hoped, with Gilbert and Jamison making the All-Star squad and Hughes leading the league in steals and being named to the NBA All-Defensive First Team. Though s everal players battled injuries—including Hughes, who missed 20 games with a broken finger, and Brown, with a broken foot—talent and teamwork steadied the boat whenever it reached troubled waters. The Wizards went 45-37 to finish with their best record in 26 years.
Gilbert ended the year averaging 25.5 points, 5.1 assists and 4.7 rebounds a game. With Hughes going for 22 a night, Washington featured the highest-scoring backcourt in the league.
Washington’s #5 seed in the playoffs earned them a shot at the young Chicago Bulls, who ambushed the Wizards in the first two games of the series. Washington came back to knot the series and seemed to have Game 5 locked up when the Bulls made a 10-0 run to even the score 110-110 with five seconds left. Gilbert responded with a dramatic buzzer-beater for the victory.
In Game 6, Gilbert was ice cold, but he made the game-turning play on defense. With two minutes left and Chicago up by four, Kirk Hinrich stole the ball from Hughes and drove the other way all alone. Gilbert broke toward his basket as soon as he saw the play developing and soared through the air to tip Hinrich's shot away. The defensive gem ignited a 7-0 run for Washington, which triumphed 94-91.
Next up were Shaquille O’Neal, Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat. Without a solid center, the Wizards were helpless against Shaq, and no one could stop Wade, either. Miami took the first three games easily. In Game 4, the Wizards found themselves on the short end again, down 13 points in the fourth quarter, their season just minutes away from its conclusion. But with one last, great gasp, Washington pulled it together and roared back into the lead—though only for a moment. The Wizards lost, 99-95.
Larry Hughes, 2001 Heritage
Gilbert and Jamison were joined for the 2005–06 season by Caron Butler, who was acquired from the Lakers for Kwame Brown. Together they formed the NBA’s top-scoring trio, with Gilbert netting 29.3 a game followed by Jamison (20.5) and Butler (17.6). Gilbert was also among the league leaders in steals and assists. Somehow, he was overlooked by the fans when the All-Star ballots were tallied. He did made it in as an injury sub for Jermaine O’Neal.
The Wizards finished strong and snagged a playoff berth with a 42–40 record. They were the highest-scoring team in the East. Unfortunately, they had to play the surging Cavaliers, a 50-win team led by LeBron James. Cleveland took a 2–1 lead in the series after Gilbert missed a game-winning 3-pointer in Game 3. He redeemed himself in Game 4 by exploding for 20 in the fourth quarter to even the series.
Alas, the Wizards couldn't hold back the Cavaliers, who took the series in six. The last two wins were one-point heartbreakers in overtime. Gilbert sent Game 6 into OT with a 30-foot buzzer-beater, but later he missed two free throws that allowed the Cavs to score the winning bucket.
Gilbert was certain that Washington was just a player or two away from having a dominant club. During the off-season, he offered to take a pay cut if the team used it to secure a key free agent or two. The team did sign two players—Darius Songaila and DeShawn Stevenson—but they were hardly difference-makers in 2006–07.
Gilbert definitely was, however. Time and again he hit long jumpers or driving layups in the waning moments of games to give the Wizards a victory, or at least keep them alive. In a December meeting with Kobe Bryant and the Lakers, Gilbert exploded for 60 points. The Wizards won 147–141 in overtime, and Gilbert smashed Earl Boykins's NBA record for points in an overtime period, dropping 16 on LA.
Performances like these enabled Gilbert to average around 30 points a game in the early going, and this proved enough for him to out-ballot Vince Carter for a starting spot in the All-Star Game. Butler, who was also having a nice year, made his All-Star Game debut as well.
As usuual, there was plenty of drama in Gilbert’s basketball life. After he was left off the roster for the FIBA World Championship, he vowed to make Team USA director Jerry Colangelo pay. When the Wizards played the Phoenix Suns, Gilbert lit them up for 54 points and glared at Colangelo throughout the game.
The season seemed to be heading in the right direction for Washington until second-half injuries began to diminish the starting five. The critical blow was a season-ending knee injury for Gilbert, suffered in an April collision with Gerald Wallace of the Charlotte Bobcats. The Wizards squeezed into the playoffs, but they were swept by the Cavs in the first round.
G’ilberts knee injury, a torn left MCL, robbed him of almost two entire seasons. He also underwent micro-fracture surgery. Gilbert made a total of 10 starts in 2007–08 and 2008–09. The Wizards did an admirable job the first year, finishing with a winning record (followed by another first-round loss to the Cavs). In year two of Gilbert’s absence, the team fell apart. Washington lost 63 games, tying the franchise record for futilty.
Caron Butler, 2007 Upper Deck
Gilbert was finally back in playing shape for the 2009–10 season. New coach Flip Saunders also had Jamison and Butler in the lineup, along with newly acquired role players Mike Miller and Randy Foye. Gilbert was getting his 20-plus a night and doing double-duty as Washington's de facto point guard, but the club was losing regularly and was mired in the Southeast Division cellar.
During the Christmas holidays, news began trickling out of the Verizon Center that Gilbert had brought three unloaded guns into the Washington locker room. Later it was revealed that he and Javaris Crittendon had been waving guns at each other in a dispute over gambling debts. This happened a month after beloved longtime owner Abe Pollin—who changed the team's name from Bullets to remove the taint of gun violence—had passed away. And of course it was not Gilbert’s first association with firearms. As a young player in Golden State, he was also caught with an improperly registered weapon in his possession.
When local cops and federal investigators got involved, Gilbert stopped talking. Prior to that, however, he had attempted to shade the incident as an all-in-fun tussle between teammates. He explained the presence of the guns—a violation of NBA rules and DC law—by saying he had brought them to work from his home in Virginia so his kids wouldn't get them. Gilbert also issued a public apology.
Bad things do happen to good people, and by all accounts Gilbert is a decent guy. The gun incident won't define him as a person or player, but it may bring him into the crosshairs of the NBA, which could use him as an example for other potential gun-toting stars. The league, in fact, suspended him indefinitely. A long suspension during a comeback season is not what Gilbert needed. Nor is a legal hassle over the morals clause in NBA playing agreements—which would give the Wizards a convenient out of a top-heavy contract.
The bigger problem for Gilbert may be DC's strict gun laws. There normally isn’t much room to manuever with authorities. There is a chance he could face jail time.
Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain. Gilbert always takes the court feeling he has something to prove. Having cemented his reputation as one of basketball’s most dynamic scorers, he must now lift a talented but often aimless club from mediocrity to the exalted status of a conference power—and live down the inevitable jokes as one of the NBA’s true gunners.
GILBERT THE PLAYER
Javaris Crittenton, 2008 Topps
Very few NBA stars can legitimately boast Gilbert's combination of skills. He has excellent range on his jumper, can nail the mid-range pull-up and can dunk over most players in the league. As a point guard, his penetrate-and-pass style works well with slashers like Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler.
Even post-surgery, Gilbert is a relentless attacker. Whether he is hot or cold, he comes at opponenets the same way. Unafraid of fellow guards, he instead studies the defensive tendencies of the forwards and centers he is likely to encounter after shaking off his primary defender. He jumps into the shot-blockers and pulls up against the wide-body defenders, ensuring him either of a trip to the foul line or an open look at the rim.
Gilbert is a smart defender who is conscious of beating his man to a spot, and he rarely reaches in to pick up cheap fouls. Most of his steals come from playing the passing lanes. He has also become adept at slapping the ball away from big men when they put it on the floor.
Gilbert has shown the ability to lead his team, but he also provide unnecessary distractions at times. No one disputes his talent. But critics question whether he has the mental make-up to win a championship.
En helt, hverken mere eller mindre.
Lidt fra og om Gilbert Arenas. Den mand er ganske enkelt et mirakel, intet mindre. Manden er en basketball spiller i NBA, der havde 3-4 fantastiske sæsoner på et lorte hold. Som bloggede om alt mellem himmel om jord. Som tillod sig at have idiosynkrasier, og som ikke var flov over det. Som dyrkede sit spil med ægte dedikerethed, ingen lykke der, ingen latterlig tale om passion, også det, men mere end det. En tragedie, ikke så meget fordi han krydsede en streg, for ærlig talt havde han krydset den mange gange før, men fordi filmen knækkede lidt for ham. Og den knækkede mest af alt fordi han fløj højt, blev skadet, blev deprimeret og derefter tog et par pistoler med i omklædnings rummet og måske, måske ikke pegede dem mod en eller anden. Men nu er han blevet traded til Orlando Magic. Ikke et af mine ynglingshold, men det var hans gamle hold heller ikke (jeg hader begge holds dragter, de er blå og kolde.) og det bliver Orlando heller aldrig. Derfor kan jeg jo godt holde med dem alligevel, der er alligevel ingen af topholdende som er fede. Lakers har Kobe og kobe må man respektere, men ligefrem holde med ham? Niks. Miami har de tre store og Wade er fed, lebron kan jeg overhoved ikke blive fascineret af og Bosh er ordinær, men god. Boston, de er for fede og de har virkelig et hold. Orlando, har Howard, et fysisk monster med absolut ingen moves, men nu har de altså også Gilbert Arenas og det er ganske fucking fedt... jeg håber, for historien om en helt, at han vinder et mesterskab, eller to og smasker lebron og kobe på vejen. Det ville være fedt.
Lakers har også Phil Jackson og bare lige for at påpege hvorfor man ikke kan undgå at elske amerikansk sport så tjeck den her bog ud (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sacred-Hoops-Spiritual-Lessons-Hardwood/dp/1401308813/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292895621&sr=1-1), Phil Jackson = The Zen master & det er fanme ikke for sjovt og han er ikke for sjov, han er tværtimod den absolut mest vindende træner de sidste 15 år.
Et par citater fra Phil "I gave it my body and mind, but I have kept my soul." "Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We."
# "Once you've done the mental work, there comes a point you have to throw yourself into the action and put your heart on the line. That means not only being brave, but being compassionate towards yourself, your teammates and your opponents."
# "If you meet the Buddha in the lane, feed him the ball."
# "Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game--and life--will take care of itself."
# "Approach the game with no preset agendas and you'll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts."
Her er en artikel fra Esquire, og lidt forskellige citater, pranks og lign og et link til hans blog på nba.com http://www.nba.com/blog/gilbert_arenas.html#061019_01. Og lad mig lige nævne hvorfor han er et mirakel, et af mine mirakler, sådan et som giver håb i mørket. Det er han fordi han er basketball spiller og prankster, en rigtig prankster laver ikke sine pranks de gængse steder, niks han dukker op de mærkeligste steder og får på en eller anden mærkelig måde skabt sig en niche hvor han kan få lov. En rigtig prankster kommer som regel også ud i noget tragisk og selskabt, det er en del af miraklet.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12185-2005Apr23.html
We can't remember Gilbert Arenas without remembering some of the pranks he pulled on teammates during his time in D.C. We do that in the next installment of Gilbert Arenas Tribute Day.http://www.bulletsforever.com/2010/12/20/1887057/gilbert-arenas-tribute-day-remembering-arenas-pranks
I understand what people think because of the perception of me. They read the funny stuff, like me taking a crap in [teammate] Andray Blatche's shoes. But nobody is going to ask what Andray did to deserve it.
So I was sitting in my house playing Halo and I'm looking at my surveillance camera and I see Dominic and Nick creep up to my property all decked out. They parked across the street and they're running towards my house wearing masks and helmets. They came around the side of the house, jumped the wall, and came in through the garage. But by the time they did all that, I already was out of the house and jumped the other wall. They were in the house looking for me and I was across the street flattening their tires so when they decided to leave they'd be on flats. They looked around the house and couldn't find me so they came outside and saw me across the street flattening their tires. I called my friend and had him come pick me up and take me back to the house.
When they left the house, they stole my daddy's toaster! I like making toast! So I told them, Since you don't want to give my toaster back, it's war.
EDIT: User ThaCaronic pointed out that I left off the culmination of this epic tale. Because no story is complete without an appearance by Andray Blatche's chubby cousin.
I told them, Since you don't want to give my toaster back, it's war. He wanted his stuff back, I wanted my stuff back so I told them that we were going to have a paintball shootout.
We all went to the store like Sports Authority and bought all these paintball guns, like eight or nine new ones (because I already had three), then we bought the CO2 cartridges and like 12,000 paintballs and I even bought a couple paintball grenades.
We tried to make the teams fair.
It was Nick and Dominic and then Nick recruited last year's rookie, Andray Blatche. I thought Andray had enough of the pranks, but I guess he didn't. Andray brought his two friends, to make it five on their team.
My team was me, my friend John and three guys who were at my house hooking up stereo equipment.
So we finished buying everything and were in the store parking lot and Nick was mad that I had all the CO2 so he started to take some of mine. I was like, "Put the CO2 down or I'm going to shoot you with the paintball gun." But then he realizes I'm really going to shoot him with the paintball gun, and he puts it back. "You see what happens when you follow directions" But as I'm closing the trunk with the CO2 in it, he takes some and tries to jump in Dominic's car. I said, "Dominic, do not close that door." Nick is screaming, "Close the door Dominic! Close the door!" So Dominic left the door open. I go to Nick, "You have three seconds to put the CO2 back. One! Two!" He started to scramble to put it back and I got him anyway. I got him like six times. So he's laying in the car all mad saying, "I don't want to play no more."
So the war is still on.
I tell them that the shootout is planned for 12 o'clock midnight in my backyard because it's pure black back there. You can't see nothing. So I tell them, "12 o'clock, be in my backyard and we're going at it five on five."
We're putting all our stuff together at my place and they're putting their stuff together at their place but they are having trouble with it so I have my boy John and my other teammate Adam to go over to their place and have them help them fix their guns. And when John and Adam showed up at their place they tried to ambush them, thinking that I was going to come too. But I wasn't. So John and Adam had to run out of there.
So it's like 11:10 at night and all you here are paintball hitting the windows. POOM. POOM. POOM. POOM. POOM. They were already in the backyard. They showed up an hour early.
So we hurried up and put on all of our gear and snuck outside through some of the vents in the house.
And then we had a nice, good old paintball shootout in the dark.
They ran out of CO2 pretty quick because my team had most of it so one of Andray's friends yells, "Aww, it's not fair!" and they started to bail and jumped back over the wall. But one the kids was a little too heavy. His name is Jamar. That's 'Dray's cousin. Jamar couldn't get over the wall because Jamar has been eating one too many Twinkies.
So Jamar got stuck in my yard with the five of us. We gave him the chance to walk out like a man, or cry like a girl. He did both. He cried like a little girl while he was walking and running while we were shooting paintballs at him. I told him, "Hey, come in the lion's den, you're bound to get hit."
They said that he got hit so many times that he had trouble putting his clothes on the next day.
We played for about an hour and a half. I haven't had that much fun in a long time. What people don't realize is that when you're in the NBA, you lose stuff like that. You're not in there with kids, you're in there with grown men that have families. By having these young kids on the team, it's fun for me because I get to have that childhood that I lost. I lost it when I came into the NBA when I got picked No. 31 because I was so determined to be the best that I didn't get to actually have fun having fun, if that makes sense.
That's the moral of the story: I had fun.
Et par qoutes: http://www.gilbertology.net/quotes/
10. "Congratulations! You get to go into the mind of me, Gilbert Arenas, of the Washington Wizards. Good luck."
This was the first line from Arenas' first blog entry on NBA.com. Even at the beginning, he knew that anyone who dared to read his thoughts was in for a wild ride, and indeed we were.
9. "i wake up this morning and seen i was the new JOHN WAYNE..lmao media is too funny."
Arenas' first tweet after news broke about his gun scandal Like the first line from his blog, his first tweet after gun-gate gave us a pretty good idea that things were only going to go downhill from there.
8. "I told them to cut the leg off a couple times. You know, cut it off and then bring it back to me when it was all healed. Because, you know, Heather Mills on Dancing with the Stars, she had that leg. I was saying I could borrow one of those and finish out the season. But they wasn't going for that."
Arenas describing his somewhat ill-conceived plan on his blog to get back on the court after his first surgery.
7. "When coach said after we get the rebound to get the ball to me, from there I knew the shot I was going to take. I just feel so comfortable taking that shot because I practice it. It's not a rushed shot. You know, it's a great shot for me.
Like I said, I'm 8-for-8 for this year on anything behind the 30-foot line and I feel comfortable shooting that.
I mean, because I know I'm going to shoot it, he's still in retreat. You know, if I know I'm going to shoot it, I'm always more dangerous than the defender."
When Arenas was in full-attack mode, he knew how to put his defenders on retreat in almost any situation, even in final moments of the game. His description of how he created space for his game-winning shot on his blog gave us the best window into his attack mentality.
6. "Before, in Eddie's offense, because it was made for the 3s and the 4s, I took a lot of wild shots, fastbreak threes. But since I have the ball more, I probably don't need to do that," he said. "I plan on taking less than 100 threes. I'm not going to be a three-point shooter this year. I worked most of the year on mid-range jumpers."
Arenas on his new role in Flip Saunders' offense. He took 181 threes in 32 games that season.
5. "They read the funny stuff, like me taking a crap in [teammate] Andray Blatche's shoes. But nobody is going to ask what Andray did to deserve it. You read about it because that's when I'm at my goofiest, when I'm around my teammates. I don't get in trouble outside of this building. You are not going to catch me drinking and driving, or picking up prostitutes. People don't see what my teammates see, the guy who is in here three times a day working out. That's the guy they don't see."
The last great quote from Arenas. In fairness, we really didn't hear enough about his incredible work-ethic or how he avoided some of the pitfalls of the NBA nighlife. But seriously, how can we focus on that when he's talking about taking a crap in someone's shoe?
4. "They told me that I might have won. They was 95 percent sure that I won, but they still didn't know yet, they were still calculating the numbers.
They said, 'We're 95 percent sure that you overtook Vince Carter.'
So I woke my daughter up and we started dancing.
She was crying because she was still sleepy, but I considered it laughing."
Arenas on his blog, showing off his parenting skills after learning he had been named to the starting lineup for the 2007 All-Star Game.
3. "The hibachi is coming to a city near you. I'm cooking chicken and shrimp, but if you want to throw a double team my way, filet mignon gets cooked too."
Arenas on his blog, after his Hibachi nickname caught on with the public.
2. "i guess everyone wants me to act like the rest of the nba twitters players...(i bought a shirt today from the mall)(practice was tough 2 (coach said he likes my high socks lol lol)(we had a close game today) is that really who u wanna follow..sounds a little boring to me"
Gilbert Arenas summing up what makes him different and what endears him to fans better than any of us ever could on Twitter.
1. "My swag was phenomenal."
Arenas after draining a buzzer-beater to defeat the Bucks. If there were four words more apt at describing Arenas at the peak of his talents, I haven't heard them.
ABSTRACT: A pseudo-psychotherapeutic assessment that attempts to shed light on the eclectic nature and unique brain chemistry of the NBA's most unheralded superstar.
SUBJECT: Gilbert Arenas
AGE: 24
HEIGHT: 6'4"
WEIGHT: 210
OCCUPATION: Point guard, Washington Wizards, National Basketball Association
OCCUPATIONAL FUNCTION
To dictate and maintain the flow of the game; to get the ball to the bigs; to shoot when he can, from wherever he can, which is pretty much wherever he wants; to run an offense formulated around him, in particular his physical strength, his inherent toughness, and his desire to take the big shot (see complicating factor 5, below).
ACHIEVEMENT LEVEL
Fourth in the league in scoring last year (twenty-nine points per game); second in three-pointers made; led his employer, a perennial league doormat, to the playoffs for the second straight year--this time while averaging a league-high thirty-four points postseason.
SYMPTOMS
Never stops training (never), never leaves his hotel room while on the road, starts ridiculously ambitious collections he cannot possibly finish, goes to extreme lengths to keep others from leaving him voice-mail messages, sleeps on a couch even while at home, maintains grudges for self-motivation, formulates grandiose architectural plans, fights dirty with coworkers, crushes his opponents in Xbox without remorse.
COMPLICATING FACTORS
1. Subject was not selected until the second round of the 2001 NBA draft.
2. Despite previously noted achievements, subject was left off the 2006 All-Star team initially and the U. S. national team.
3. Subject plays (excellent) basketball in what is otherwise a football city.
4. Subject works in the shadows of more visible, highly marketable players throughout the league.
5. Subject ended last season by uncharacteristically choking on two free throws against the Cleveland Cavaliers after playing LeBron James to a standstill for six games.
PRELIMINARY DIAGNOSIS
Hypercompetitiveness syndrome tempered by disruptive patterns of obsessively focused semipointless addictions, masochistic recreational-wrestling tendencies, a sociopathic room-service addiction, and a demonstrated case of manufactured-nemesis dependence.
ENTRY 1: SUBJECT REPORTS A DREAM
SUBJECT: Lately I've been dreaming I'm playing basketball on a desert island.
OBSERVER: Like in the middle of the ocean? With palm trees?
SUBJECT: Yeah, playing full court, a real game. That's all there is on the island--just the court, water lapping right up to the edge of the blacktop. It's just water all out there. Deep. Then I notice there are fans out in the waves, circling us.
OBSERVER: What are they doing? Swimming?
SUBJECT: They're watching. Riding Jet Skis, lying on floats out there in the waves. Swimming, too, I guess. But a long way out. What do you think that means? I've been asking people.
OBSERVER: Maybe you want a little distance. Or you feel surrounded.
SUBJECT: Yeah. The other dream I've been having is my teeth falling out. But that just means that someone is stabbing me in the back. So I know that one.
ENTRY 2: SUBJECT'S PEER-ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY
I was taught that you find out who players are just like how you find out about dogs. If you have a litter of dogs and you put them in the dark, put them in a corner, and you shake your keys, whatever dogs come to those keys, them's the ones you want. They're curious. They want to know what's going on. They're ready. They're fighting. The ones who sit in the corner, they're afraid. They don't have the heart. That's how I look at people. You put them in a situation and see how they act. Some of these great stars in the league, some of them are scared to take big shots. Some of them are scared to fail. Some of them don't have the heart. You start seeing it and you start picking at it. Other people--like Earl Boykins, he's a fourth-quarter player. Ben Gordon is a fourth-quarter player. The fourth-quarter player is the one you want. Me, I'm gonna shoot that shot every time. Every time.
ENTRY 3: OFF-SEASON TRAINING HABITS OBSERVED
The Wizards' strength coach feeds the subject the ball, off both makes and misses, which aren't many. He shoots from beyond the three-point arc, stringing together nine made shots in a row at one point, then twelve. Later, from a full four paces farther back, he makes fourteen in a row. That, it should be noted, is a heave. The subject is expressionless when the ball goes in. The loose upward thrust of his body, the calibrated arc, the soft thwick of the net--it does not seem to please him or affirm anything about what he is doing. But missing, even once, makes him wince. Missing twice makes him tilt his head, as if the world were presenting him with a puzzle, a slight recalibration that needs to be made. When he reaches a thousand shots, he turns, smiling and loose, and fires at every basket in the gym from that one spot--twenty-eight feet, then twenty feet, then fifty and at least sixty and fifty and twenty again. He makes four out of six.
ENTRY 4: SELF-IMPOSED ISOLATING TENDENCIES
OBSERVER'S NOTE: In five seasons in the NBA, first with Golden State and now the Wizards--forty-one road games per year, plus exhibition trips and, more recently, the playoffs--the subject estimates that he has left his hotel room a total of six times, and only in L. A., where he grew up.
I think it came from my first year. I was so depressed that I wasn't playing that I didn't want to go out. I'm gonna stay and do sit-ups or jumping jacks. And I'm not gonna come out. Not till morning. There's nothing out there for me. I don't know those cities. I don't know where to go. I don't have any people. Other guys will be out, the steak house, the clubs, just rollin'. Me, I'm fine. Time is falling off. Sun's coming up. I'm doing more sit-ups than the night before. I'll watch three or four movies. I'll watch infomercials. The last thing I bought was this colon cleanser. I just got talked into it. I'm like, Man, he makes it sound so good.
ENTRY 5: SELF-PERCEPTION OF OCCUPATIONAL ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
When I go into the ring, I know every team and what those players do. I don't pay attention to the guards. Get those bigs. Okay, this one takes charges, so I have to stop and pull. I've got to trick him. Or, say, Alonzo--he loves to block shots, so I'm going to jump into him every time. I have to think: How many fouls does Shaq have? Two in the first period? Okay, no one else is going to get that next foul on him. Our bigs--they're going to jump away from Shaq. So all right, let me go in there and get hammered. That's okay--I like the contact. Then that's three fouls, and I don't have to worry about him until after halftime. I would run into anything. Once that ball goes up, I don't feel none of that. I'm ready to get dirty. Let's play a little dirt.
ENTRY 6: THE SUBJECT OBSERVED IN OBSESSIVE MODALITY
It is Wednesday, the day after movies are traditionally released on DVD, and the subject piles up purchases at a local video store. He collects with no particular agenda in mind. He's just hungry for more. He grabs the new releases first, two and three at a time, piling them against his chest like a stack of library books. He is not picky. On this day his haul includes The Libertine, The Matador, Basic Instinct 2, three submarine movies, a dance movie, two romances, and a handful of comedies. As the stack grows higher, he slows. How many does he plan to buy today? "I usually stop when I get to here," he says, holding a finger to his chin.
He doesn't know when he will watch them, or even if he ever will. Back at home, in the supremely carpeted media room of his cozy, overcouched theater, he has a hard drive capable of holding more than ten thousand titles. Ask him and he'll tell you he wants them all. All the movies. Ever.
"I have so much entertainment going on in my house that I don't need to go out," he explains. "I don't need to go to the movies if I own all these movies. I don't need to go out to a game because I've got all these video games. I don't have to leave my house to have a conversation because I just hop online and have fun with my friends, talk trash, and do whatever we're gonna do right there."
ENTRY 7: EARLY FORMATIVE EXPERIENCE (GETTING CLOTHESLINED BY A BENCHWARMER)
The guy who helped my career out, truthfully--it's hard to believe--was Marc Jackson from Philly. Not the guard Mark Jackson. The big Marc Jackson. The year after he signed his contract with Golden State, he wasn't playing, either, so we'd come to the gym, eight o'clock, and we'd play full-court one-on-one. Me, him, and Dean Oliver. We'd play twenty-one, one-on-one, two-on-one, full-court one-on-one. From eight until practice started. Three hours. Every day. Every time we drove past him, he'd clothesline us. He was like, "Well, you're in the NBA now. You're going to feel pain." He just hammered us every day. So I learned how to be tough. And once I started playing, I was like, Okay, I'm used to this already.
ENTRY 8: UNUSUAL SLEEPING RITUALS
SUBJECT [interviewed while playing two-man Halo in his bedroom]: You can't see very good. I'll sit down on the floor if you want.
OBSERVER: No, I can tell you like to play on the bed. I'll stay here.
SUBJECT: I just started sleeping in this bed after three years. I used to sleep over there.
OBSERVER: Where? On the couch?
SUBJECT: Yeah. I trained myself to sleep on the couch.
OBSERVER: Why would you do that?
SUBJECT: You know.
OBSERVER: Not really.
SUBJECT: I don't like women all up on me, touching me. So I get up and go.
OBSERVER: Yeah?
SUBJECT: Then they get up and go. [Subject points to the video-game screen.] Stay there. Wait for me behind that door.
OBSERVER: What door?
SUBJECT: [shaking his head]: I discovered that women don't like that much.
ENTRY 9: EARLY FORMATIVE EXPERIENCE (GETTING SCHOOLED BY THE GLOVE)
It's my first year, and I'm finally starting to play. I'm getting comfortable. I'm averaging, as a starter, sixteen, six, and six. And then I run up against Gary Payton. First time in my career I'm happy to get subbed out of a game. That's when he was still the Glove, and he's just doing everything, anything. He's posting up our big. He's grabbing and pulling the ball. Any time he gets close to me, I'm picking the ball up. He's just got me screwed up. So he has eighteen points in the first period. And he comes up to me, he's like, "Rookie, you're lucky I'm not an A. I. type of player or I'd have forty on you." And coach subs me out. BRRRRR. [Note: Subject does an excellent imitation of a buzzer.] Woo! I run off the court and I'm like, "Oh, my God. Eighteen points! I'm glad I'm out. All right, Bobby Sura. Go get 'em, tiger." I never said one word to G. P. But now, after that game, I got him every time. I think it's something in my mind about what he did to me that first year. He embarrassed me so bad. As soon as he thinks about sticking me, I go at him. I know he's slower than me, so I have to take advantage of that. That's my mentality: This is your chance.
ENTRY 10: EXPLORATION OF ABERRANT CLUTCH PERFORMANCE
OBSERVER: In between those free throws against the Cavs, LeBron came over, pressed his hand against your chest, and said something to you. What did he say?
SUBJECT: He said, "If you miss this shot, you know who's gonna hit the game winner."
OBSERVER: What went through your mind?
SUBJECT: I wasn't even thinking about it. Like, I heard him. But I don't miss free throws. That's the thing: I never miss free throws at the end. And this was a big free throw. The first one, I shot it, and I went, like, What? That wasn't me. It reminded me of this movie I saw where a kid is controlling the ball from the stands. All of my balls hit the front or back of the rim--nothing ever to the left or right.
OBSERVER: In the middle of all that, you're thinking about the mechanics?
SUBJECT: Yeah.
ENTRY 11: SUBJECT'S PERCEIVED IMPORTANCE OF CATHARTIC VIOLENCE IN A TEAM SETTING
We have a couple of players who are very aggressive, like Awvee Storey. You know, when you have aggressive people, they have to relieve some of that. And I'm one of those people. I don't care--I wrastle. Wrestling. Hurting. I'll bite, punch him in the side. I'll say, Look, you punch me in the stomach once, I'll punch you in the stomach once. We'll see who falls on the floor first. It's like: No punching in the face. No chest and ribs. We don't hurt each other. I mean, a couple of rug burns here or there. I remember one day, he laid on top of me and was pinching my nose so hard that it bruised. For two days, it was just burgundy. He was calling me Rudolph. Me and him, we can't be in the same room. Our personalities clash because he's a bully and I don't like being bullied by anybody.
ENTRY 12: COMPETITIVE RESPONSE OBSERVED (OFF COURT)
The subject is playing NBA 2K6 on Xbox 360 in the players' lounge at the Verizon Center before going in for yet another off-season shooting session. He's come an hour before the gym opens, as usual, and in these moments he will take on all comers at Xbox. He won't just beat you. He will beat you by as many points as you want. Just name the amount. He treats it like a golf handicap. For this game, he's giving away two hundred points to his friend John, who has flown in from L. A. for a visit. It's the Cavs versus the Wizards all over again, except this time Gilbert has the Cavs.
He knows every kink of NBA 2K6--and how to exploit it. He has shifted LeBron to guard and put his team in a game-long full-court press. He is playing against his video-game self and doesn't like the way John is using him. "You gotta get me square to the basket," he says as the Game Gilbert misses a shot from twelve feet. "You gotta get two point guards in there."
There's a minute and a half left, and Real Gilbert is up by 191. Then Game Gilbert gets a steal and throws a long pass--only to have LeBron pick it off. "Sorry, Gilbert," says Gilbert. "You can't stop the King."
As the game ticks down, the Cavs and Gilbert--Real Gilbert--are up by 201. John has the ball and is running the clock down for the final shot. At the last second, Antawn Jamison flips in a layup that makes it 331-132. John screams, circling the room, knocking magazines here and there. The man just got beat by 199 points and is ecstatic. Gilbert shakes his head.
ENTRY 13: CONSTRICTED DIETARY HABITS
On the road, I eat hamburgers every day. The team tries to get me to eat differently, but no. Burgers, burgers, burgers. I like burgers. McDonald's burgers. Wendy's burgers. Burger King burgers. There's this one place in Canada--I even look at the schedule to find out when we play there--best burger I've ever tasted. Real soft and sweet. I ate twelve of them in one night.
ENTRY 14: TRAINING HABITS (NOCTURNAL)
It is 10:15 P.M., and the subject phones the Wizards' strength coach to ask him to open up the Verizon Center. He then sets out from his home, driving the thirty-five minutes through the light nighttime traffic. He does this often enough that it feels routine. But he's not going there now to shoot or dribble or even touch a ball. He wants nothing more than the familiarity of running the stairs in his home arena--the skit-skit-skit of his feet on the cement treads, the bass line of his own breathing, the deep ache of muscles tested once more--until the hours have passed.
He doesn't care what the clock says. He doesn't care what other players are doing just then. He cares only about filling the time. It's night, remember, a while before midnight, a time when most people his age, most people with his sort of money and cars and good looks, are drawn to the expansive and throbbing possibilities of clubs, parties, concerts. Gilbert shows no sign of that pull. He is simply dealing with time. There is so much of it in the NBA. It's the thing that surprised him the most when he came into the league. There's practice at 1:00, there's a game at night, and that's it. Even though it's late, there are so many hours left to fill until he will find sleep on the couch in his bedroom that night.
ENTRY 15: SELF-IMPOSED COMMUNICATION BARRIERS
When I get a new cell phone, first thing I do is turn it off and call from my house phone and leave stupid little messages to myself. Like: "It's me." "It's me." "This is Gilbert." "It's me." "It's Gilbert." I just fill it up, so no one can leave messages. If you don't, you leave for an hour and thirteen people have called. So there are thirteen new messages you have to listen to and it's like, Oh, man. I don't feel like hearing people's stories. Most people love leaving messages that they don't want to tell you in person. So I cut that off.
ENTRY 16: SELF-MOTIVATIONAL MECHANISMS
The subject steps out of his dressing closet holding a list he keeps there of every player in the 2001 NBA draft who was selected ahead of him. All thirty. He runs his fingers down the page. He has scratched out each player who is no longer in the league. "Hmpff," he says, pausing on a name. "I got to get the pencil out. Utah. Raul Lopez? Ain't seen him much lately."
ENTRY 17: EARLY FORMATIVE EXPERIENCE (FINANCIAL HUMILITY)
I never look at my check. I learned that lesson my first year. I got my first stub, and it said $16,000. And I'm like, "That's what I'm talking about! I'm rich!" And I'm dancing and having fun, and then something told me to look over at Antawn Jamison's stub. It said $360,000. I look back at mine: sixteen. Three hundred and sixty thousand?! That's my whole year right there--in one check! So I asked Bobby Sura, "Man, how much you make?" Bobby Sura said, "Mine says $5 million. I get mine up front." I'm like, Whoa. I never looked again. Not once. Not even tried.
ENTRY 18: ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS OF OBSESSIVE BEHAVIOR
The subject has a five-and-a-half-foot-tall safe in his basement full of jerseys of great NBA players past and present. They're all signed, too. Each of them is in a plastic bag, each numbered and cataloged. Tracy McGrady? Got him. Home and away. Hedo Turkoglu? Got him, too. There are so many jerseys packed into this safe that the plastic packages tumble out when he opens it, like a sight gag in a sitcom. There must be a thousand. It is a collection he started only a year ago. Now they come in two, three, five a day.
The subject harbors plans to build a basketball court made of glass. He doesn't know where he will build it. He doesn't know when. But the plan is to showcase these jerseys behind the glass. There will even be a mirror behind each jersey so that you can see the back of it. When the subject realized that the court floor wouldn't be big enough to hold the burgeoning collection, he decided to make the walls glass, too. And the ceiling. "When I realized I could do the ceiling," he says, "that made me feel good." More than anything, it seems to soothe him to think about building this house of glass, which he imagines wrapping him in some way, buffering him in a museumlike calm.
ENTRY 19: SUBJECT HAS AN IDEA FOR A SHOE COMMERCIAL
You know how I always throw my jersey into the stands after a game? In Washington, they just go crazy for it. So in this commercial, that's what I'm gonna do with my shoes. I've just hit a game winner, and I throw these shoes. Everyone starts to react, and you see everything in slow motion. Everyone's pushing, shoving, doing whatever it takes to try to get to these shoes. People from the 400 level, they're jumping off the ledge, they're missing the pile, hitting nothing but chairs, and you can just see in people's faces like, Ooooh, that hurt. While all this stuff's going on, one of the shoes pops out of the crowd, and a little girl gets it and she takes off. A couple of people see she has it, and they start chasing her, and she's looking back running--and then she gets clotheslined by a kid in a wheelchair. So he picks the shoe up and says--he's gonna have the only line in there--"They said I couldn't get it. Heh. Impossible is nothing." And then he rolls off.
CONCLUSION:
The subject presents divergent sets of behaviors that suggest traditional pathologies, and their concurrent presence--well, that might make you think he's flat crazy. But there is no acceleration to his madness, no manic upward slope, no crashing depressive spiral. The collections, the isolation, the aggressive tendencies, the endless training--they focus him, shield him from distractions, toughen him up. And while all that may make him a little nutty, it also makes him really, really good.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/sports/ESQ1106gilbert#ixzz18hlukBRy
Lakers har også Phil Jackson og bare lige for at påpege hvorfor man ikke kan undgå at elske amerikansk sport så tjeck den her bog ud (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sacred-Hoops-Spiritual-Lessons-Hardwood/dp/1401308813/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292895621&sr=1-1), Phil Jackson = The Zen master & det er fanme ikke for sjovt og han er ikke for sjov, han er tværtimod den absolut mest vindende træner de sidste 15 år.
Et par citater fra Phil "I gave it my body and mind, but I have kept my soul." "Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We."
# "Once you've done the mental work, there comes a point you have to throw yourself into the action and put your heart on the line. That means not only being brave, but being compassionate towards yourself, your teammates and your opponents."
# "If you meet the Buddha in the lane, feed him the ball."
# "Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game--and life--will take care of itself."
# "Approach the game with no preset agendas and you'll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts."
Her er en artikel fra Esquire, og lidt forskellige citater, pranks og lign og et link til hans blog på nba.com http://www.nba.com/blog/gilbert_arenas.html#061019_01. Og lad mig lige nævne hvorfor han er et mirakel, et af mine mirakler, sådan et som giver håb i mørket. Det er han fordi han er basketball spiller og prankster, en rigtig prankster laver ikke sine pranks de gængse steder, niks han dukker op de mærkeligste steder og får på en eller anden mærkelig måde skabt sig en niche hvor han kan få lov. En rigtig prankster kommer som regel også ud i noget tragisk og selskabt, det er en del af miraklet.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12185-2005Apr23.html
We can't remember Gilbert Arenas without remembering some of the pranks he pulled on teammates during his time in D.C. We do that in the next installment of Gilbert Arenas Tribute Day.http://www.bulletsforever.com/2010/12/20/1887057/gilbert-arenas-tribute-day-remembering-arenas-pranks
I understand what people think because of the perception of me. They read the funny stuff, like me taking a crap in [teammate] Andray Blatche's shoes. But nobody is going to ask what Andray did to deserve it.
So I was sitting in my house playing Halo and I'm looking at my surveillance camera and I see Dominic and Nick creep up to my property all decked out. They parked across the street and they're running towards my house wearing masks and helmets. They came around the side of the house, jumped the wall, and came in through the garage. But by the time they did all that, I already was out of the house and jumped the other wall. They were in the house looking for me and I was across the street flattening their tires so when they decided to leave they'd be on flats. They looked around the house and couldn't find me so they came outside and saw me across the street flattening their tires. I called my friend and had him come pick me up and take me back to the house.
When they left the house, they stole my daddy's toaster! I like making toast! So I told them, Since you don't want to give my toaster back, it's war.
EDIT: User ThaCaronic pointed out that I left off the culmination of this epic tale. Because no story is complete without an appearance by Andray Blatche's chubby cousin.
I told them, Since you don't want to give my toaster back, it's war. He wanted his stuff back, I wanted my stuff back so I told them that we were going to have a paintball shootout.
We all went to the store like Sports Authority and bought all these paintball guns, like eight or nine new ones (because I already had three), then we bought the CO2 cartridges and like 12,000 paintballs and I even bought a couple paintball grenades.
We tried to make the teams fair.
It was Nick and Dominic and then Nick recruited last year's rookie, Andray Blatche. I thought Andray had enough of the pranks, but I guess he didn't. Andray brought his two friends, to make it five on their team.
My team was me, my friend John and three guys who were at my house hooking up stereo equipment.
So we finished buying everything and were in the store parking lot and Nick was mad that I had all the CO2 so he started to take some of mine. I was like, "Put the CO2 down or I'm going to shoot you with the paintball gun." But then he realizes I'm really going to shoot him with the paintball gun, and he puts it back. "You see what happens when you follow directions" But as I'm closing the trunk with the CO2 in it, he takes some and tries to jump in Dominic's car. I said, "Dominic, do not close that door." Nick is screaming, "Close the door Dominic! Close the door!" So Dominic left the door open. I go to Nick, "You have three seconds to put the CO2 back. One! Two!" He started to scramble to put it back and I got him anyway. I got him like six times. So he's laying in the car all mad saying, "I don't want to play no more."
So the war is still on.
I tell them that the shootout is planned for 12 o'clock midnight in my backyard because it's pure black back there. You can't see nothing. So I tell them, "12 o'clock, be in my backyard and we're going at it five on five."
We're putting all our stuff together at my place and they're putting their stuff together at their place but they are having trouble with it so I have my boy John and my other teammate Adam to go over to their place and have them help them fix their guns. And when John and Adam showed up at their place they tried to ambush them, thinking that I was going to come too. But I wasn't. So John and Adam had to run out of there.
So it's like 11:10 at night and all you here are paintball hitting the windows. POOM. POOM. POOM. POOM. POOM. They were already in the backyard. They showed up an hour early.
So we hurried up and put on all of our gear and snuck outside through some of the vents in the house.
And then we had a nice, good old paintball shootout in the dark.
They ran out of CO2 pretty quick because my team had most of it so one of Andray's friends yells, "Aww, it's not fair!" and they started to bail and jumped back over the wall. But one the kids was a little too heavy. His name is Jamar. That's 'Dray's cousin. Jamar couldn't get over the wall because Jamar has been eating one too many Twinkies.
So Jamar got stuck in my yard with the five of us. We gave him the chance to walk out like a man, or cry like a girl. He did both. He cried like a little girl while he was walking and running while we were shooting paintballs at him. I told him, "Hey, come in the lion's den, you're bound to get hit."
They said that he got hit so many times that he had trouble putting his clothes on the next day.
We played for about an hour and a half. I haven't had that much fun in a long time. What people don't realize is that when you're in the NBA, you lose stuff like that. You're not in there with kids, you're in there with grown men that have families. By having these young kids on the team, it's fun for me because I get to have that childhood that I lost. I lost it when I came into the NBA when I got picked No. 31 because I was so determined to be the best that I didn't get to actually have fun having fun, if that makes sense.
That's the moral of the story: I had fun.
Et par qoutes: http://www.gilbertology.net/quotes/
10. "Congratulations! You get to go into the mind of me, Gilbert Arenas, of the Washington Wizards. Good luck."
This was the first line from Arenas' first blog entry on NBA.com. Even at the beginning, he knew that anyone who dared to read his thoughts was in for a wild ride, and indeed we were.
9. "i wake up this morning and seen i was the new JOHN WAYNE..lmao media is too funny."
Arenas' first tweet after news broke about his gun scandal Like the first line from his blog, his first tweet after gun-gate gave us a pretty good idea that things were only going to go downhill from there.
8. "I told them to cut the leg off a couple times. You know, cut it off and then bring it back to me when it was all healed. Because, you know, Heather Mills on Dancing with the Stars, she had that leg. I was saying I could borrow one of those and finish out the season. But they wasn't going for that."
Arenas describing his somewhat ill-conceived plan on his blog to get back on the court after his first surgery.
7. "When coach said after we get the rebound to get the ball to me, from there I knew the shot I was going to take. I just feel so comfortable taking that shot because I practice it. It's not a rushed shot. You know, it's a great shot for me.
Like I said, I'm 8-for-8 for this year on anything behind the 30-foot line and I feel comfortable shooting that.
I mean, because I know I'm going to shoot it, he's still in retreat. You know, if I know I'm going to shoot it, I'm always more dangerous than the defender."
When Arenas was in full-attack mode, he knew how to put his defenders on retreat in almost any situation, even in final moments of the game. His description of how he created space for his game-winning shot on his blog gave us the best window into his attack mentality.
6. "Before, in Eddie's offense, because it was made for the 3s and the 4s, I took a lot of wild shots, fastbreak threes. But since I have the ball more, I probably don't need to do that," he said. "I plan on taking less than 100 threes. I'm not going to be a three-point shooter this year. I worked most of the year on mid-range jumpers."
Arenas on his new role in Flip Saunders' offense. He took 181 threes in 32 games that season.
5. "They read the funny stuff, like me taking a crap in [teammate] Andray Blatche's shoes. But nobody is going to ask what Andray did to deserve it. You read about it because that's when I'm at my goofiest, when I'm around my teammates. I don't get in trouble outside of this building. You are not going to catch me drinking and driving, or picking up prostitutes. People don't see what my teammates see, the guy who is in here three times a day working out. That's the guy they don't see."
The last great quote from Arenas. In fairness, we really didn't hear enough about his incredible work-ethic or how he avoided some of the pitfalls of the NBA nighlife. But seriously, how can we focus on that when he's talking about taking a crap in someone's shoe?
4. "They told me that I might have won. They was 95 percent sure that I won, but they still didn't know yet, they were still calculating the numbers.
They said, 'We're 95 percent sure that you overtook Vince Carter.'
So I woke my daughter up and we started dancing.
She was crying because she was still sleepy, but I considered it laughing."
Arenas on his blog, showing off his parenting skills after learning he had been named to the starting lineup for the 2007 All-Star Game.
3. "The hibachi is coming to a city near you. I'm cooking chicken and shrimp, but if you want to throw a double team my way, filet mignon gets cooked too."
Arenas on his blog, after his Hibachi nickname caught on with the public.
2. "i guess everyone wants me to act like the rest of the nba twitters players...(i bought a shirt today from the mall)(practice was tough 2 (coach said he likes my high socks lol lol)(we had a close game today) is that really who u wanna follow..sounds a little boring to me"
Gilbert Arenas summing up what makes him different and what endears him to fans better than any of us ever could on Twitter.
1. "My swag was phenomenal."
Arenas after draining a buzzer-beater to defeat the Bucks. If there were four words more apt at describing Arenas at the peak of his talents, I haven't heard them.
ABSTRACT: A pseudo-psychotherapeutic assessment that attempts to shed light on the eclectic nature and unique brain chemistry of the NBA's most unheralded superstar.
SUBJECT: Gilbert Arenas
AGE: 24
HEIGHT: 6'4"
WEIGHT: 210
OCCUPATION: Point guard, Washington Wizards, National Basketball Association
OCCUPATIONAL FUNCTION
To dictate and maintain the flow of the game; to get the ball to the bigs; to shoot when he can, from wherever he can, which is pretty much wherever he wants; to run an offense formulated around him, in particular his physical strength, his inherent toughness, and his desire to take the big shot (see complicating factor 5, below).
ACHIEVEMENT LEVEL
Fourth in the league in scoring last year (twenty-nine points per game); second in three-pointers made; led his employer, a perennial league doormat, to the playoffs for the second straight year--this time while averaging a league-high thirty-four points postseason.
SYMPTOMS
Never stops training (never), never leaves his hotel room while on the road, starts ridiculously ambitious collections he cannot possibly finish, goes to extreme lengths to keep others from leaving him voice-mail messages, sleeps on a couch even while at home, maintains grudges for self-motivation, formulates grandiose architectural plans, fights dirty with coworkers, crushes his opponents in Xbox without remorse.
COMPLICATING FACTORS
1. Subject was not selected until the second round of the 2001 NBA draft.
2. Despite previously noted achievements, subject was left off the 2006 All-Star team initially and the U. S. national team.
3. Subject plays (excellent) basketball in what is otherwise a football city.
4. Subject works in the shadows of more visible, highly marketable players throughout the league.
5. Subject ended last season by uncharacteristically choking on two free throws against the Cleveland Cavaliers after playing LeBron James to a standstill for six games.
PRELIMINARY DIAGNOSIS
Hypercompetitiveness syndrome tempered by disruptive patterns of obsessively focused semipointless addictions, masochistic recreational-wrestling tendencies, a sociopathic room-service addiction, and a demonstrated case of manufactured-nemesis dependence.
ENTRY 1: SUBJECT REPORTS A DREAM
SUBJECT: Lately I've been dreaming I'm playing basketball on a desert island.
OBSERVER: Like in the middle of the ocean? With palm trees?
SUBJECT: Yeah, playing full court, a real game. That's all there is on the island--just the court, water lapping right up to the edge of the blacktop. It's just water all out there. Deep. Then I notice there are fans out in the waves, circling us.
OBSERVER: What are they doing? Swimming?
SUBJECT: They're watching. Riding Jet Skis, lying on floats out there in the waves. Swimming, too, I guess. But a long way out. What do you think that means? I've been asking people.
OBSERVER: Maybe you want a little distance. Or you feel surrounded.
SUBJECT: Yeah. The other dream I've been having is my teeth falling out. But that just means that someone is stabbing me in the back. So I know that one.
ENTRY 2: SUBJECT'S PEER-ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY
I was taught that you find out who players are just like how you find out about dogs. If you have a litter of dogs and you put them in the dark, put them in a corner, and you shake your keys, whatever dogs come to those keys, them's the ones you want. They're curious. They want to know what's going on. They're ready. They're fighting. The ones who sit in the corner, they're afraid. They don't have the heart. That's how I look at people. You put them in a situation and see how they act. Some of these great stars in the league, some of them are scared to take big shots. Some of them are scared to fail. Some of them don't have the heart. You start seeing it and you start picking at it. Other people--like Earl Boykins, he's a fourth-quarter player. Ben Gordon is a fourth-quarter player. The fourth-quarter player is the one you want. Me, I'm gonna shoot that shot every time. Every time.
ENTRY 3: OFF-SEASON TRAINING HABITS OBSERVED
The Wizards' strength coach feeds the subject the ball, off both makes and misses, which aren't many. He shoots from beyond the three-point arc, stringing together nine made shots in a row at one point, then twelve. Later, from a full four paces farther back, he makes fourteen in a row. That, it should be noted, is a heave. The subject is expressionless when the ball goes in. The loose upward thrust of his body, the calibrated arc, the soft thwick of the net--it does not seem to please him or affirm anything about what he is doing. But missing, even once, makes him wince. Missing twice makes him tilt his head, as if the world were presenting him with a puzzle, a slight recalibration that needs to be made. When he reaches a thousand shots, he turns, smiling and loose, and fires at every basket in the gym from that one spot--twenty-eight feet, then twenty feet, then fifty and at least sixty and fifty and twenty again. He makes four out of six.
ENTRY 4: SELF-IMPOSED ISOLATING TENDENCIES
OBSERVER'S NOTE: In five seasons in the NBA, first with Golden State and now the Wizards--forty-one road games per year, plus exhibition trips and, more recently, the playoffs--the subject estimates that he has left his hotel room a total of six times, and only in L. A., where he grew up.
I think it came from my first year. I was so depressed that I wasn't playing that I didn't want to go out. I'm gonna stay and do sit-ups or jumping jacks. And I'm not gonna come out. Not till morning. There's nothing out there for me. I don't know those cities. I don't know where to go. I don't have any people. Other guys will be out, the steak house, the clubs, just rollin'. Me, I'm fine. Time is falling off. Sun's coming up. I'm doing more sit-ups than the night before. I'll watch three or four movies. I'll watch infomercials. The last thing I bought was this colon cleanser. I just got talked into it. I'm like, Man, he makes it sound so good.
ENTRY 5: SELF-PERCEPTION OF OCCUPATIONAL ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
When I go into the ring, I know every team and what those players do. I don't pay attention to the guards. Get those bigs. Okay, this one takes charges, so I have to stop and pull. I've got to trick him. Or, say, Alonzo--he loves to block shots, so I'm going to jump into him every time. I have to think: How many fouls does Shaq have? Two in the first period? Okay, no one else is going to get that next foul on him. Our bigs--they're going to jump away from Shaq. So all right, let me go in there and get hammered. That's okay--I like the contact. Then that's three fouls, and I don't have to worry about him until after halftime. I would run into anything. Once that ball goes up, I don't feel none of that. I'm ready to get dirty. Let's play a little dirt.
ENTRY 6: THE SUBJECT OBSERVED IN OBSESSIVE MODALITY
It is Wednesday, the day after movies are traditionally released on DVD, and the subject piles up purchases at a local video store. He collects with no particular agenda in mind. He's just hungry for more. He grabs the new releases first, two and three at a time, piling them against his chest like a stack of library books. He is not picky. On this day his haul includes The Libertine, The Matador, Basic Instinct 2, three submarine movies, a dance movie, two romances, and a handful of comedies. As the stack grows higher, he slows. How many does he plan to buy today? "I usually stop when I get to here," he says, holding a finger to his chin.
He doesn't know when he will watch them, or even if he ever will. Back at home, in the supremely carpeted media room of his cozy, overcouched theater, he has a hard drive capable of holding more than ten thousand titles. Ask him and he'll tell you he wants them all. All the movies. Ever.
"I have so much entertainment going on in my house that I don't need to go out," he explains. "I don't need to go to the movies if I own all these movies. I don't need to go out to a game because I've got all these video games. I don't have to leave my house to have a conversation because I just hop online and have fun with my friends, talk trash, and do whatever we're gonna do right there."
ENTRY 7: EARLY FORMATIVE EXPERIENCE (GETTING CLOTHESLINED BY A BENCHWARMER)
The guy who helped my career out, truthfully--it's hard to believe--was Marc Jackson from Philly. Not the guard Mark Jackson. The big Marc Jackson. The year after he signed his contract with Golden State, he wasn't playing, either, so we'd come to the gym, eight o'clock, and we'd play full-court one-on-one. Me, him, and Dean Oliver. We'd play twenty-one, one-on-one, two-on-one, full-court one-on-one. From eight until practice started. Three hours. Every day. Every time we drove past him, he'd clothesline us. He was like, "Well, you're in the NBA now. You're going to feel pain." He just hammered us every day. So I learned how to be tough. And once I started playing, I was like, Okay, I'm used to this already.
ENTRY 8: UNUSUAL SLEEPING RITUALS
SUBJECT [interviewed while playing two-man Halo in his bedroom]: You can't see very good. I'll sit down on the floor if you want.
OBSERVER: No, I can tell you like to play on the bed. I'll stay here.
SUBJECT: I just started sleeping in this bed after three years. I used to sleep over there.
OBSERVER: Where? On the couch?
SUBJECT: Yeah. I trained myself to sleep on the couch.
OBSERVER: Why would you do that?
SUBJECT: You know.
OBSERVER: Not really.
SUBJECT: I don't like women all up on me, touching me. So I get up and go.
OBSERVER: Yeah?
SUBJECT: Then they get up and go. [Subject points to the video-game screen.] Stay there. Wait for me behind that door.
OBSERVER: What door?
SUBJECT: [shaking his head]: I discovered that women don't like that much.
ENTRY 9: EARLY FORMATIVE EXPERIENCE (GETTING SCHOOLED BY THE GLOVE)
It's my first year, and I'm finally starting to play. I'm getting comfortable. I'm averaging, as a starter, sixteen, six, and six. And then I run up against Gary Payton. First time in my career I'm happy to get subbed out of a game. That's when he was still the Glove, and he's just doing everything, anything. He's posting up our big. He's grabbing and pulling the ball. Any time he gets close to me, I'm picking the ball up. He's just got me screwed up. So he has eighteen points in the first period. And he comes up to me, he's like, "Rookie, you're lucky I'm not an A. I. type of player or I'd have forty on you." And coach subs me out. BRRRRR. [Note: Subject does an excellent imitation of a buzzer.] Woo! I run off the court and I'm like, "Oh, my God. Eighteen points! I'm glad I'm out. All right, Bobby Sura. Go get 'em, tiger." I never said one word to G. P. But now, after that game, I got him every time. I think it's something in my mind about what he did to me that first year. He embarrassed me so bad. As soon as he thinks about sticking me, I go at him. I know he's slower than me, so I have to take advantage of that. That's my mentality: This is your chance.
ENTRY 10: EXPLORATION OF ABERRANT CLUTCH PERFORMANCE
OBSERVER: In between those free throws against the Cavs, LeBron came over, pressed his hand against your chest, and said something to you. What did he say?
SUBJECT: He said, "If you miss this shot, you know who's gonna hit the game winner."
OBSERVER: What went through your mind?
SUBJECT: I wasn't even thinking about it. Like, I heard him. But I don't miss free throws. That's the thing: I never miss free throws at the end. And this was a big free throw. The first one, I shot it, and I went, like, What? That wasn't me. It reminded me of this movie I saw where a kid is controlling the ball from the stands. All of my balls hit the front or back of the rim--nothing ever to the left or right.
OBSERVER: In the middle of all that, you're thinking about the mechanics?
SUBJECT: Yeah.
ENTRY 11: SUBJECT'S PERCEIVED IMPORTANCE OF CATHARTIC VIOLENCE IN A TEAM SETTING
We have a couple of players who are very aggressive, like Awvee Storey. You know, when you have aggressive people, they have to relieve some of that. And I'm one of those people. I don't care--I wrastle. Wrestling. Hurting. I'll bite, punch him in the side. I'll say, Look, you punch me in the stomach once, I'll punch you in the stomach once. We'll see who falls on the floor first. It's like: No punching in the face. No chest and ribs. We don't hurt each other. I mean, a couple of rug burns here or there. I remember one day, he laid on top of me and was pinching my nose so hard that it bruised. For two days, it was just burgundy. He was calling me Rudolph. Me and him, we can't be in the same room. Our personalities clash because he's a bully and I don't like being bullied by anybody.
ENTRY 12: COMPETITIVE RESPONSE OBSERVED (OFF COURT)
The subject is playing NBA 2K6 on Xbox 360 in the players' lounge at the Verizon Center before going in for yet another off-season shooting session. He's come an hour before the gym opens, as usual, and in these moments he will take on all comers at Xbox. He won't just beat you. He will beat you by as many points as you want. Just name the amount. He treats it like a golf handicap. For this game, he's giving away two hundred points to his friend John, who has flown in from L. A. for a visit. It's the Cavs versus the Wizards all over again, except this time Gilbert has the Cavs.
He knows every kink of NBA 2K6--and how to exploit it. He has shifted LeBron to guard and put his team in a game-long full-court press. He is playing against his video-game self and doesn't like the way John is using him. "You gotta get me square to the basket," he says as the Game Gilbert misses a shot from twelve feet. "You gotta get two point guards in there."
There's a minute and a half left, and Real Gilbert is up by 191. Then Game Gilbert gets a steal and throws a long pass--only to have LeBron pick it off. "Sorry, Gilbert," says Gilbert. "You can't stop the King."
As the game ticks down, the Cavs and Gilbert--Real Gilbert--are up by 201. John has the ball and is running the clock down for the final shot. At the last second, Antawn Jamison flips in a layup that makes it 331-132. John screams, circling the room, knocking magazines here and there. The man just got beat by 199 points and is ecstatic. Gilbert shakes his head.
ENTRY 13: CONSTRICTED DIETARY HABITS
On the road, I eat hamburgers every day. The team tries to get me to eat differently, but no. Burgers, burgers, burgers. I like burgers. McDonald's burgers. Wendy's burgers. Burger King burgers. There's this one place in Canada--I even look at the schedule to find out when we play there--best burger I've ever tasted. Real soft and sweet. I ate twelve of them in one night.
ENTRY 14: TRAINING HABITS (NOCTURNAL)
It is 10:15 P.M., and the subject phones the Wizards' strength coach to ask him to open up the Verizon Center. He then sets out from his home, driving the thirty-five minutes through the light nighttime traffic. He does this often enough that it feels routine. But he's not going there now to shoot or dribble or even touch a ball. He wants nothing more than the familiarity of running the stairs in his home arena--the skit-skit-skit of his feet on the cement treads, the bass line of his own breathing, the deep ache of muscles tested once more--until the hours have passed.
He doesn't care what the clock says. He doesn't care what other players are doing just then. He cares only about filling the time. It's night, remember, a while before midnight, a time when most people his age, most people with his sort of money and cars and good looks, are drawn to the expansive and throbbing possibilities of clubs, parties, concerts. Gilbert shows no sign of that pull. He is simply dealing with time. There is so much of it in the NBA. It's the thing that surprised him the most when he came into the league. There's practice at 1:00, there's a game at night, and that's it. Even though it's late, there are so many hours left to fill until he will find sleep on the couch in his bedroom that night.
ENTRY 15: SELF-IMPOSED COMMUNICATION BARRIERS
When I get a new cell phone, first thing I do is turn it off and call from my house phone and leave stupid little messages to myself. Like: "It's me." "It's me." "This is Gilbert." "It's me." "It's Gilbert." I just fill it up, so no one can leave messages. If you don't, you leave for an hour and thirteen people have called. So there are thirteen new messages you have to listen to and it's like, Oh, man. I don't feel like hearing people's stories. Most people love leaving messages that they don't want to tell you in person. So I cut that off.
ENTRY 16: SELF-MOTIVATIONAL MECHANISMS
The subject steps out of his dressing closet holding a list he keeps there of every player in the 2001 NBA draft who was selected ahead of him. All thirty. He runs his fingers down the page. He has scratched out each player who is no longer in the league. "Hmpff," he says, pausing on a name. "I got to get the pencil out. Utah. Raul Lopez? Ain't seen him much lately."
ENTRY 17: EARLY FORMATIVE EXPERIENCE (FINANCIAL HUMILITY)
I never look at my check. I learned that lesson my first year. I got my first stub, and it said $16,000. And I'm like, "That's what I'm talking about! I'm rich!" And I'm dancing and having fun, and then something told me to look over at Antawn Jamison's stub. It said $360,000. I look back at mine: sixteen. Three hundred and sixty thousand?! That's my whole year right there--in one check! So I asked Bobby Sura, "Man, how much you make?" Bobby Sura said, "Mine says $5 million. I get mine up front." I'm like, Whoa. I never looked again. Not once. Not even tried.
ENTRY 18: ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS OF OBSESSIVE BEHAVIOR
The subject has a five-and-a-half-foot-tall safe in his basement full of jerseys of great NBA players past and present. They're all signed, too. Each of them is in a plastic bag, each numbered and cataloged. Tracy McGrady? Got him. Home and away. Hedo Turkoglu? Got him, too. There are so many jerseys packed into this safe that the plastic packages tumble out when he opens it, like a sight gag in a sitcom. There must be a thousand. It is a collection he started only a year ago. Now they come in two, three, five a day.
The subject harbors plans to build a basketball court made of glass. He doesn't know where he will build it. He doesn't know when. But the plan is to showcase these jerseys behind the glass. There will even be a mirror behind each jersey so that you can see the back of it. When the subject realized that the court floor wouldn't be big enough to hold the burgeoning collection, he decided to make the walls glass, too. And the ceiling. "When I realized I could do the ceiling," he says, "that made me feel good." More than anything, it seems to soothe him to think about building this house of glass, which he imagines wrapping him in some way, buffering him in a museumlike calm.
ENTRY 19: SUBJECT HAS AN IDEA FOR A SHOE COMMERCIAL
You know how I always throw my jersey into the stands after a game? In Washington, they just go crazy for it. So in this commercial, that's what I'm gonna do with my shoes. I've just hit a game winner, and I throw these shoes. Everyone starts to react, and you see everything in slow motion. Everyone's pushing, shoving, doing whatever it takes to try to get to these shoes. People from the 400 level, they're jumping off the ledge, they're missing the pile, hitting nothing but chairs, and you can just see in people's faces like, Ooooh, that hurt. While all this stuff's going on, one of the shoes pops out of the crowd, and a little girl gets it and she takes off. A couple of people see she has it, and they start chasing her, and she's looking back running--and then she gets clotheslined by a kid in a wheelchair. So he picks the shoe up and says--he's gonna have the only line in there--"They said I couldn't get it. Heh. Impossible is nothing." And then he rolls off.
CONCLUSION:
The subject presents divergent sets of behaviors that suggest traditional pathologies, and their concurrent presence--well, that might make you think he's flat crazy. But there is no acceleration to his madness, no manic upward slope, no crashing depressive spiral. The collections, the isolation, the aggressive tendencies, the endless training--they focus him, shield him from distractions, toughen him up. And while all that may make him a little nutty, it also makes him really, really good.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/sports/ESQ1106gilbert#ixzz18hlukBRy
Sunday, December 19, 2010
How to play Guitar by David Fair
How to play Guitar
by David Fair
I taught myself to play guitar. It’s incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string father out by the tuning end it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That’s all there is to it. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that’s pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you’d still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day.
Traditionally, guitars have a fat string on the top and they get skinnier and skinnier as they go down. But he thing to remember is it’s your guitar and you can put whatever you want on it. I like to put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldn’t have so much to worry about. What ever string he hit had to be the right one because they were all the same.
Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong. But that absurd. How could it be wrong? It’s your guitar and you’re the one playing it. It’s completely up to you to decide hoe it should sound. In fact I don’t tune by the sound at all. I wind the strings until they’re all about the same tightness. I highly recommend electric guitars for a couple of reasons. First of all they don’t depend on body resonating for the sound so it doesn’t matter if you paint them. As also, if you put all the knobs on your amplifier on 10 you can get a much higher reaction to effort ratio with an electric guitar than you can with an acoustic. Just a tiny tap on the strings can rattle your windows, and when you slam the strings, with your amp on 10, you can strip the paint off the walls.
The first guitar I bought was a Silvertone. Later I bought a Fender Telecaster, but it really doesn’t matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar that tunes at the other end. I’ve never tried one. I guess they sound alright but they look ridiculous and I imagine you’d feel pretty foolish holding one. That would affect your playing. The idea isn’t to feel foolish. The idea is to put a pick in one hand and a guitar in the other and with a tiny movement rule the world.
by David Fair
I taught myself to play guitar. It’s incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string father out by the tuning end it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That’s all there is to it. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that’s pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you’d still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day.
Traditionally, guitars have a fat string on the top and they get skinnier and skinnier as they go down. But he thing to remember is it’s your guitar and you can put whatever you want on it. I like to put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldn’t have so much to worry about. What ever string he hit had to be the right one because they were all the same.
Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong. But that absurd. How could it be wrong? It’s your guitar and you’re the one playing it. It’s completely up to you to decide hoe it should sound. In fact I don’t tune by the sound at all. I wind the strings until they’re all about the same tightness. I highly recommend electric guitars for a couple of reasons. First of all they don’t depend on body resonating for the sound so it doesn’t matter if you paint them. As also, if you put all the knobs on your amplifier on 10 you can get a much higher reaction to effort ratio with an electric guitar than you can with an acoustic. Just a tiny tap on the strings can rattle your windows, and when you slam the strings, with your amp on 10, you can strip the paint off the walls.
The first guitar I bought was a Silvertone. Later I bought a Fender Telecaster, but it really doesn’t matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar that tunes at the other end. I’ve never tried one. I guess they sound alright but they look ridiculous and I imagine you’d feel pretty foolish holding one. That would affect your playing. The idea isn’t to feel foolish. The idea is to put a pick in one hand and a guitar in the other and with a tiny movement rule the world.
Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing
Budding guitarists take note.
1. Listen to the birds
That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.
2. Your guitar is not really a guitar
Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one.
3. Practice in front of a bush
Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn't shake, eat another piece of bread.
4. Walk with the devil
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're brining over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out
If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.
6. Never point your guitar at anyone
Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.
7. Always carry a church key
That's your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He's one. He was a Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song "I Need a Hundred Dollars" is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty — making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he's doing it.
8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument
You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.
9. Keep your guitar in a dark place
When you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.
10. You gotta have a hood for your engine
Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can't escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.
--------------------------
This sound advice can be found in the book Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-A-Rama (1996) which includes an article written by John McCormick about Moris Tepper.
"Though they bear numbers, they are not arranged heirarchically — each Commandment has equal import."
1. Listen to the birds
That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.
2. Your guitar is not really a guitar
Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one.
3. Practice in front of a bush
Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn't shake, eat another piece of bread.
4. Walk with the devil
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're brining over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out
If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.
6. Never point your guitar at anyone
Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.
7. Always carry a church key
That's your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He's one. He was a Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song "I Need a Hundred Dollars" is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty — making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he's doing it.
8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument
You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.
9. Keep your guitar in a dark place
When you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.
10. You gotta have a hood for your engine
Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can't escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.
--------------------------
This sound advice can be found in the book Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-A-Rama (1996) which includes an article written by John McCormick about Moris Tepper.
"Though they bear numbers, they are not arranged heirarchically — each Commandment has equal import."
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