Eerily echoing Michael Vick’s legal catastrophe of three years ago, another prominent athlete is primed to be stripped of his $100 million contract for alleged felonious misconduct.
NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas is embroiled in a profound legal and league quagmire stemming from an alleged gun standoff between him and a teammate in the Wizard’s locker room. If the charges and allegations prove true, reports say the NBA will move to void Arenas’ $111 million contract.
Gilbert and his father vehemently deny such a potentially disastrous situation ever materialized, dismissing such reports as “ludicrous.” Gilbert has threatened to sue the New York Post, which first reported the supposed pre-practice altercation.
NBA Commissioner’s office, The Washington Metropolitan Police Department and even the U.S. Attorney’s Office are conducting separate investigations on Arenas, a popular player and renowned NBA jokester, because he allegedly broke stern NBA rules by bringing handguns onto NBA property that later became the center of a heated gun standoff with Washington Wizard teammate Javaris Crittenton over a gambling debt.
The situation reportedly began during a card game on the team’s overnight flight back to Washington from Phoenix that turned heated between Arenas and Crittenton on Dec. 20. The hostilities resumed on Dec. 21 in the locker room when Crittenton confronted Arenas for failing to reconcile a gambling debt. According to police reports, Arenas placed three guns that he owns on a chair near Crittenton’s locker and invited him to pick one. Crittenton said he had a gun of his own.
Gilbert is almost certain to face league sanctions of some degree separate from the “gun standoff” because he already admitted to bringing guns to the Washington Wizards’ facilities, the Verizon Center, which is strictly prohibited. Gilbert claims that he brought the guns there because he no longer wanted weapons in the same home with his newborn daughter and was going to have the team turn them over to the police.
Gilbert is also primed for a severe legal backlash because Washington has arguably the nation’s strictest gun laws. Even though the NBA collective bargaining agreement allows players to own licensed guns, they are not allowed at team facilities or on team-sanctioned flights.
Plaxico Burress, formerly of the New York Giants, is currently serving a three-year sentence for illegally possessing a firearm in New York, another jurisdiction known to administer tough penalties. –terry shropshire
