“Bad decisions lead to last decisions.”
— DMX
SO, David Stern had an epiphany on the Feast of the Epiphany and went from indecisive to indefinite.
Mazel Tov.
Apparently, the one person who had the power to put Gilbert Arenas in suspended condemnation was the last person to realize he should have done it before the empty chamber had the opportunity to mock the gravity of his depravity, repeatedly and publicly.
What, exactly, took the commissioner more than two weeks to make a two-second decision?
“David almost always waits until the matter is adjudicated,” said a team president in Stern’s defense.
Not so in 2004 with the Malice in the Palace perpetrators; long before Auburn Hills prosecutors brought Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson and Jermaine O’Neal up on charges, the commissioner had placed them in suspended contamination.
Stern wasted little time in punishing players who stormed the stands and flattened fans and had no reason to delay determining the penalty in this non-dilemma, gun-totin’ invasion onto Wizards soil by Arenas.
It’s not as if Agent (IQ Sub) Zero hadn’t broken at least 17 or 18 league commandments.
It’s not like Arenas’ incessant double-doubles of arrogance and ignorance didn’t re-substantiate the need for a substantial sabbatical.
What’s distressing is it took Tuesday’s endearing Philly photo op of Arenas giving the finger (pistol) to force the commissioner off the couch. That image said everything the NBA didn’t want us to know about the Wizards’ assembly of uncollectables.
Every single numbskull in picture perfect view (11, not “some” as the team stated in its rebuke of their contemptible conduct) surrounding Arenas prior to the game acted as if they had inhaled laughing gas as the team leader pointed his trigger fingers at them.
You would have thought they were auditioning for a Boys Gone Loco in the Sombrero video.
Where, oh where, was coach Flip Saunders while this affront was being staged?
More shocking than anything, I suppose, is they didn’t drop their shorts in front of 15,000 fans and almost as many cameras.
Only then did it dawn on Stern what should have been done in regulation vs. overtime. Arenas, who anticipated getting off light — four or five games in his esteemed judgment considering the sentences other players got for gun violations, off NBA property — probably felt his charismatic, inane act was going to get him over.
Who knows, Arenas might have taken Stern’s dawdling as a sign of weakness. So, like most gamblers, he simply pushed his luck too far and then ran all the way home, just to say he’s sorry, again.
Some fools actually believed Arenas when he apologized in a prepared statement. They figured he had found religion. In fact, someone was writing his religion for him.
I’ll give Stern this: By handing Arenas an indefinite suspension with perhaps “worse” to come, at least we have someone in Washington with an exit strategy.
Should Stern really want to start rebuilding my respect, he will indefinitely suspend the entire Wizards franchise. On second thought, how would we be able to tell just by looking at the standings?
Cheap shots aside, despite Arenas’ deportation, we are still ensnared in sordidness. Javaris Crittenton’s alleged culpability is back in full force. It now seems he had his own gun in the Wizards’ locker room on Dec. 21, as my original source purported, when he refused to be sweated by Wild Gil.
The new twist from the Washington Post is that Crittenton pulled his own gun when Arenas placed his three on a chair in front of his locker, and supposedly put a round in the chamber. My source never advanced the scene to that extreme.
If Arenas asserted that to the Washington Post, as appears to be the case, then he must have told the same thing to D.C. detectives.
True or untrue? Perhaps as few as five members of the Wizards know for sure — Arenas, Crittenton, a couple unnamed teammates and trainer Eric Waters, who, according to accounts and descriptions, had one of Arenas’ theoretically unloaded guns hurled by Crittenton across the floor at his feet.
I wonder how many people have died from unloaded guns?
“If it’s true what’s being written,” a Crittenton ally poses indignantly, “where’s Javaris’ gun?”
Needless to say (so why am I saying it?), should police be unable to produce the gun, he’s probably free and clear.
On the record, Arenas told us in his statement he took full responsibility for inciting the incident and provoking Crittenton.
Behind closed doors, in all likelihood, he’s looking to deflect some of the blame in hopes of copping a more favorable plea.
This just in: Tiger Woods dropped Arenas as a spokesman.