Nearly a decade has passed since Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton were involved in a locker room incident that featured guns. In the end, the heavily chronicled episode led to lengthy suspensions for both players but, until Monday, the “real” story had not fully come to light.
However, Arenas spoke at length to Jon Gold of The Action Network and shed a great deal of light as to what actually led to the eventual showdown in the locker room. In short, it all began with a now infamous card game and greatly escalated from there.
The interview lays out Arenas joining a card game, booray (as well as a brief history of booray as the NBA’s card game of choice), after awakening from a brief nap on a team flight and, before he even arrived, things weren’t going well for Crittenton. As Arenas details, he entered with his normal level of bravado, talking trash to all parties involved, until a winning hand arrived for teammate JaVale McGee. The mere presence of Arenas ended up costing Crittenton more money and that, compounded with the trash talk, did not sit well with Crittenton.
In the end, Crittenton paid McGee and wasn’t at all happy about it, leading to Arenas telling the story plainly of the discussion that prompted the eventual locker room showdown.
“They figured it out, JaVale wins,” Arenas said. “The plane lands and now Javaris says to JaVale, ‘So you just gonna let me lose my money like that? You ain’t even gonna be a real n—- and give me a chance to get my money back? Aw hell naw, this is the type of sh*t that gets you f*cked up in these streets.’ I was like, ‘Javaris, I will burn your car, while you’re in it. Then we’ll find an extinguisher to help ya ass out,’ and he says, ‘Well, I’ll just shoot you then.’ I said, ‘Man, I’ll bring you the guns to shoot me!’”
Arenas famously was a man of his word in this argument and brought four (unloaded) guns to Wizards practice just two days later in an attempt to “call (Crittenton’s) bluff” and the response was Crittenton turning around and pointing a loaded gun at his now-former teammate.
While many details were at least tangentially known prior to this interview (one that is definitely worth a full read), Arenas definitely provides clarity at a depth never before seen. The involvement of a recent two-time NBA champion in McGee is also noteworthy to say the least. Crittenton’s side of the story remains untold, as he is currently in prison until 2036 after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter and is not permitted to speak to the media as part of his sentence.
In retrospect, a bizarre story, even at the time, seems even crazier in a present-day sense but, at the very least, the public now knows more about what transpired.
