Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 9:00 am  |  79 responses

Gilbert’s Statement

by Marcel Mutoni / @marcel_mutoni

As he awaits his fate — both from local and federal authorities, plus the NBA — Gilbert Arenas released a statement through his lawyer yesterday.

Arenas says it was all a “misguided effort” to play a joke on teammate Javaris Crittenton.

Here is the statement in full, via NBA.com:

“I appreciated the opportunity to meet with law enforcement officials today. As the person who caused this trouble in the first place, I thought it was my duty to be the first witness to come forward and meet with the prosecutors and detectives. I told my attorney I wanted to get in for an interview as soon as we could arrange it, and that was today.

I told the detectives and prosecutors the whole story about my storing the unloaded guns at the Verizon Center and what I was intending to do when I took them out of my locker on December 21st.

As I have said before, I had kept the four unloaded handguns in my house in Virginia, but then moved them over to my locker at the Verizon Center to keep them away from my young kids. I brought them without any ammunition into the District of Columbia, mistakenly believing that the recent change in the DC gun laws allowed a person to store unloaded guns in the District.

On Monday, December 21st, I took the unloaded guns out in a misguided effort to play a joke on a teammate. Contrary to some press accounts, I never threatened or assaulted anyone with the guns and never pointed them at anyone.

Joke or not, I now recognize that what I did was a mistake and was wrong. I should not have brought the guns to DC in the first place, and I now realize that there’s no such thing as joking around when it comes to guns even if unloaded.

I am very sorry for the effect that my serious lapse in judgment has had on my team, my teammates, the National Basketball Association and its fans. I want to apologize to everybody for letting them down with my conduct, and I promise to do better in the future.

I also want to thank the detectives and prosecutors on the case for the professionalism and courtesy they showed me during the interview today. I stand ready to continue to give my full cooperation to them and to the League as they investigate this incident.”

Following that weighty moment, Gil returned to his Twitter account, to continue waging war against the NY Post‘s Peter Vescey, post slightly creepy videos, and of course to tell more bad jokes.

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  • boogster

    Why are black people so sensitive? Can you not just ignore silly little lily white boy? I mean he is ticking you guys off like a puppet master…

  • http://zapata10.wordpress.com Adrian Zapata

    @Hoodsnake… Nothing wrong with guns, I’m actually a member of the NRA.

  • http://slamonline.com Allenp

    Yep, I was right to avoid this comment section.

  • http://www.twitter.com/Th3_R3al_Chris Th3_R3al_Chris

    Gilbert’s the man. I’m more of a fan now than before.

  • http://www.twitter.com/Th3_R3al_Chris Th3_R3al_Chris

    This is like Starbury 2.0.

  • http://hibachi20.blogspot.com Moose

    Ignorant comments shouldn’t be left for SLAMOnline, or any other website. Keep it to basketball.

  • http://dsjfhklf.com Jukai

    As SLAM gets more popular, there really should be some sort of moderators that will look over these posts and delete them in a time span that isn’t eleven friggin’ hours.
    I mean, this is getting ridiculous.

  • rav

    sadly when a black athlete does dumb stuff this site will attract morons like the ones who’ve posted stuff today

  • http://www.twitter.com/PDXGayBball dma

    hibachi!

  • LeoneL

    What Jukai said.

  • somedude

    What is up with people and guns; they are intended for nothing but killing people. You don’t wear them to look cool, shoot them for fun, or in Gilbert’s case, use them for props.
    I will never understand why Americans fight so hard to have guns to protect themselves, when it’s other people with guns they’re protecting themselves from.

  • http://www.realcavsfans.com Anton
  • Luke

    He’s only just realised there’s no such thing as joking around when it comes to guns?Wow..he’s more of an idiot than I thought.

  • michael scorn

    Who’s to say that LeBron didn’t hold that camera man at gun point to get that tape from last summer?

  • michael scorn

    At the end of the day, no one got shot, got hurt, or got robbed. I blame the security at the Verizon Center. Don’t they have metal detectors?

  • http://dsjfhklf.com Jukai

    Yeah Michael Scorn, it is the Verizon Center security’s fault 100%, because they should have known the 100+ millionaire would bring in three handguns. Man.

  • doyouwantmore

    There’s this thing in your constitution that says everyone should have guns so the government can’t control all the guns. The Founding Fathers put it in there because they had just freed themselves from a big government. The problem isn’t the law. The problem is the culture that no longer respects the law, or anything else.

  • nastierthanu

    Nothing to see here move along

  • tip of texas

    thats just stupid who cares that he’s a 100+ millionaire. if a taliban makes it to be an allstar he could blow up an arena?

  • http://www.luketynan.blogspot.com litetitan

    So, based on Gilberts own confession/ accounting – whats the chances that he does get a federal charge? could he go to jail? will his contract be ‘tore up’??
    will this actually be the thing that ironically saves the franchise money and gets them BACK to winning ways?
    _____
    To think that GIlbert saves the franchise without putting up a single shot.

  • German Reignman

    read what Karl Malone has to say on si. com …

  • http://www.hibachi20.blogspot.com Hursty

    Myles wins.
    Best movie.
    Close the comments though please. You can guarantee more stupid insensitive posts are coming.

  • L

    James is ignorant and racist. Please can you post at some other website..L

  • tavoris

    @litetitan…since he’s cooperating, he’s unlikely to get jail time. He’s gonna get a hefty suspension tho, and the Wiz ownership will try mightily to void that contract too (even tho the PA has already said they will fight that vigorously).

  • http://alimartin07@yahoo.com Ali

    For the life of me I can’t understand why these million dollar pro athletes would even think about touching a weapon after seeing the Burress ordeal go down. C’mon Son!

  • http://slamonline.com Allenp

    One of the rumors is that Wizards knew about the guns for a long time. They were aware that Arenas was keepign them in his locker, which makes sense given the fact the team staff has access to that locker in order to keep it clean and supplied with certain stuff. So, if the Wizards knew about the guns it’s not like he had them there without their permission.

  • http://slamonline.com Allenp

    Lots of people own guns. I don’t see why having money would make you not want to own guns. It should just make you more aware of the gun laws in your area and more serious about following them.
    It’s stupid for the media and others to push abstinence from weapons for rich athletes, when we see how many other “regular” Americans own and use guns. If I was rich, I would make it my business to be highly aquainted with weapons.

  • http://slamonline.com nbk

    @Ali – SEAN TAYLOR is all that people should need to know about why million dollar athletes own guns

  • http://slamonline.com nbk

    Burress is a complete moron – thats the only way to look at that situation

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