Silent Assassin

Gilbert Arenas: Silent Assassin 

The prodigal son has returned. Gilbert Arenas, point guard of the Washington Wizards, is slowly making his way back into the NBA spotlight after a year and a half of 3 surgeries, and only 15 NBA games played, but not the same spotlight Gilbert used to love to shine in. Arenas and the Wizards were recently fined 25,000 dollars apiece due to not talking to the media during preseason. Wait….is that right? Gilbert Arenas, that man responsible for making blogging popular in sports, the man that would yell Hibachi, Japanese word for hot grill when he shot, the man that couldn’t stop talking, was fined for not talking?

            What does this mean to the NBA? This is not good for anyone in the league, except the Wizards franchise. A franchise that has had its share of bad luck, has potential to turn it around, but theirs that word…potential.

Nearly 50 percent of the NBA’s GM’s believe the Wizards are going to be the most improved team in the 2009-10 season, with good reason. Sure they acquired Randy Foye and Mike Miller, sure they got Brendon Heywood back and already running his mouth at Lebron, and SURE, Gilbert Arenas is healthy again, but what type of player is Arenas. He sure isn’t the same loud mouth entertaining Kanye-esque confident Arenas he was before.

 It was at media day he revealed his future of silence, “I’m not the entertainer anymore…I don’t feel like speaking anymore.” He said, “ I just want to go out there and play…When I was entertaining, all you guys focused on was my words. Now I’d rather you just focus on my basketball.”

This is bad news for the rest of the NBA. This is the same player that already had swagger through the roof. Putting his hands up on a game winning shot, even before the ball went in the basket. This is the same player that, in his last full season in the NBA, averaged a stat sheet filling 28.4 points, 4.5 rebounds, 6.0 assists, 1.9 steals, while making 2.8 3-pointers a game and shooting 84.4% from the free throw line. Talk about a fantasy beast.

The East has got a sleeper on its hands with the Washington Wizards. No more talking from Arenas, no more blogging. According to him he doesn’t even HAVE a “tweeter”. This is all while you have headliners like Shaq, who is dealing with his 2 million or so friends on Twitter, and Ron Artest managing three different accounts.

This is a different Arenas, and a different Washington team as a whole. Flip Saunders was brought in to help the Wizard’s tarnished image as a franchise, after winning a franchise low 19 games. He singed a four year 18 million contract over the summer. On the first day of practice, Saunders, the coach that led the band of brothers Detroit Pistons to three straight conference finals, brought iPods filled with set plays installed in them.

Although preseason cannot entirely accurately portray how good a team really is, it is an indicator. Gilbert has had shining moments in all his games so far. His first game back, he tallied 10 assists, followed by a perfect 6 for 6 shooting night while notching in another 9 assists. In the Wizards last victory over the Pistons, Arenas shot 9 of 11, pulling in 24 points to lead the Wizards in a close victory.

We witnessed in Arenas’ final healthy year, an incredible talent in Arenas that kept the game as exciting as possible. Game winner after game winner, blog after blog. The craziest part about this ultra confident point guard, is Arenas is almost as good as Arenas actually thinks he is, which is incredible. The 27 year old Arenas no longer wants the attention he once vied for a few seasons back, but little does he know, the silent assassin Arenas and the Wizards will be demanded much attention when they step foot on the court this season.