Gazo the Prankster just never made it to the big screen, or internet screen, or any screen. But you could certainly tell that the cartoon rendition of “Gazo” was modeled off the same blueprint as Gilbert Arenas.
On Friday, in the aftermath of the mythical Gazo the Prankster serving as a character witness for Arenas (via The Washington City Paper), the mold for the cartoon appeared in cartoon form … well actually, “illustrated” with some sort of art medium.
It’s not exactly the Gazo the Prankster kids might watch, but the courtroom sketches of Gilbert may be the closest we ever come to seeing him in cartoon form. Here they go.
Here, Arenas seems to be shrugging his shoulders, with a tinge of Alfred E. Neuman. The cartoon version of Judge Robert Morin seems to be an elder Keith Olbermann-looking kind of fellow, with perhaps a little bit of a perm up front.
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The Wizards are about to play the team, and the player, against whom Gilbert Arenas injured his knee.
This same team, the Charlotte Bobcats, and their home court, is where Antawn Jamison took, and missed, his last shot as a Washington Wizard, which also happened to occur in Jamison’s home state. Had he made the shot, the game would have gone into overtime. Instead, the Wizards lost.
Tonight, those Bobcats play the Wizards with a chance to give them their worst losing streak in franchise history … 14 games.
Ain’t life grand? But hey, Gilbert Arenas is free.
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Call me surprised. Call me a little bit excited. Call me surprised again.
And call a bunch of other people pissed off because the sentence was too light. Oh well, they’ll get over it.
The sentencing has come down and Gilbert Arenas will receive two years probation, 30 days in a halfway house and must perform 400 hours of community service. He also must donate $5,000 to the victims of violence fund and must register as a gun offender.
The start of today didn’t have a particularly odd feel to it … at least for me in terms of it being sentencing day for Arenas. I suppose some will call “poetic” the fact that it happened to be rainy/cloudy/gloomy weather here in D.C. to start the morning. But now for Gilbert, the sun is shining.
It’s also my mom’s birthday, so I’ve often thought how lucky I am to have her … and that I certainly need to call her more often … especially in contrast to the relationship Gilbert had with his now deceased mother. Or rather, the one that he didn’t.
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{Immediately after giving him pre-game a fist-bump, Flip Saunders gave his embattled 23-year old forward a pat on the backside.}
How about we talk about some basketball for a change? I mean, that is why we all are here, right? Seems like nothing but bad, non-basketball court related Wizards news to talk about lately. Well, aside from the impending Ted Leonsis takeover. But let’s get back on the court and talk some roundball!
Oh wait … the Wizards are in the midst of a 13-game losing streak, the worst in franchise history and the third time such a streak has occurred.
Dan Steinberg put out a great account of the previous 13-game losing streak on the DC Sports Bog, my favorite is loss number five, which involved a personal 11-2 run by the Miami Heat’s Khalid Reeves. My favorite loss from this current 13-game losing streak would have to be loss number three against the Celtics in Boston … you know, the JaVale McGee ‘Fish Out of Water’ game.
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Ok, enough of this Andray Blatche drama … and before we get to the Gilbert Arenas sentencing drama tomorrow … how about a more fun post surrounding the Washington Wizards? Well, the television duo of Steve Buckhantz and Phil Chenier who bring the Wizards into your homes, or wherever, each and every game.
Buck and Phil are some of the best. I’ve watched a fair bit of the NBA League Pass, but I can’t even come close to professing knowledge about each team’s TV guys. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t trade the Wizards’ pair, whom the WizzNutzz once called the Basketball Brothers Grimm, for anyone. And this, perhaps, includes one of my favs, Grandpa Hubie Brown.
As an aside, I don’t completely mind the grim nature of Buck and Phil, at least to the past extent outlined by the WizzNutzz … I call it “tastefully snarky.” But whatever, to the matter at hand …
GIMME BACK THAT FILET-O-FISH!
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I feel like this whole situation may be going in circles, but the horse is not dead yet … and another couple of beatings is well worth the words. So here goes …
All the Andray Blatche defenders, including himself, baffle me. C’mon folks, this guy has a long track record. How can he be given even an ounce of the benefit of the doubt?
To recap:
- The coaches wanted to talk to Blatche after checking him out of Tuesday’s game against Charlotte. He refused. As a player, you CANNOT do that. No arguments. Initially, Andray went to sit in what would be a seemingly normal place on the bench for him, but then immediately got up and moved further away … to the very last seat on the bench … so he wouldn’t have to hear it.
- Blatche claims he stayed “ready” to play. I don’t know about you guys, but a guy staring off into wherever, more concerned with biting his finger nails, is not ready to play in my book. Blatche’s poor body language cannot be overlooked. I implore you to try to coach a team full of guys who act in that manner.
- Flip Saunders said coaches went up to Blatche three different times, which is different from three different coaches going up to Blatche, as Andray and some others have said.
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The below piece originally appeared in ESPN’s NBA Daily Dime on March 25, 2010. Click the link for the full version available on ESPN.com.
{Flip Saunders and Andray Blatche exchange a fist-bump prior to Wednesday’s game against the Indiana Pacers.}
Andray Blatche has had quite a past 36 hours. He went from NBA Most Improved Player candidate, well, at least according to Tuesday’s pre-game fliers handed out by the Wizards’ marketing team, to only playing seven minutes that night against Charlotte and sulking on the bench, to being accused by Flip Saunders of not wanting to play nor be coached, to hitting the
D.C. sports media circuit on Wednesday, defending himself and calling his coach’s charges a
bold-faced lie, to starting last night in Indiana, leading his team in scoring with 21 points in a
99-82 loss to the Pacers.
Yep, quite an eventful 36.
More curious to most is not how Blatche responded on the court after such a tumultuous run, but how he was not suspended for the game against Indiana after his prior actions. Whether Blatche really refused to go back into Tuesday’s game against the Bobcats as his coach originally indicated remains a “he said, he said” situation. But the fact which Blatche cannot contest is that when his coaches tried to talk to him, he refused and planted himself at the end of the bench.
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As a player, Andray Blatche didn’t do anything particularly egregious in his seven minutes of action on Tuesday night, which, for the record, is only about 0.0007 of seven days. But as a person, as a teammate, that’s a different story.
Actually, Blatche didn’t do much of anything, especially rebounding, of which he achieved zero compared to 11 boards by the Charlotte Bobcats, seven offensive, while he was on the floor.
Andray took some shots, five of them, making two. None of them were absolutely terrible, aside from not really following Flip Saunders’ edict to drive to the basket as the Bobcats seemed to be able do with ease. Blatche did drive to the hoop once for a dunk. Ironically, late in the game that basket was displayed on the Verizon Center jumbo-tron as the Volkswagen “Drive of the Game.”
Blatche’s worst shot came right before Flip took him out the game. But Saunders, at least according to him, didn’t intend to call out Andray for taking ill-advised shots.
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The Wizards media and PR team probably could not have envisioned a more opposite from ideal beginning to their push for Andray Blatche to win the NBA’s Most Improved Player award. Amongst the usual pregame fare awaiting members of the media before Tuesday night’s Wizards-Bobcats game was the above flier touting the improved statistical merits of Blatche in bullet point fashion. The player responded with seven lackluster first quarter minutes before being permanently removed from the game, refusing to speak with coaches and refusing to play.
It was evident that something was going on when Flip Saunders checked Blatche out of the game at the 4:28 mark in the first. The player immediately went to the end of the bench, plopped himself in the furthest possible seat from the coaching staff and began to sulk. For the rest of the first half, Blatche would remain disconnected from his team and aloof during timeouts, looking anywhere except the huddle.
One would have expected Blatche to receive a pep talk from someone like Sam Cassell at halftime and come out ready to play alongside his teammates. No such luck. He continued to display the same poor body language for the rest of the game and never saw the floor again.
When asked why Blatche played so sparingly, Coach Saunders said, “Took him out of the game, we wanted to talk to him about not getting back on defense, not cross-checking where Mike [Miller] got handled. He didn’t want to hear it. Told him, ‘If you don’t want to come and talk, don’t want to be coached, you’re not going to play.’ We had coaches go up to him three different times, just said he didn’t want to play. Fifteen years, I’ve never seen anything like it. Never.”
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Earlier today, the Washington Post is reported that Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher R. Kavanaugh wrote a “scathing” 50-plus-page “Aid of Sentencing” memo, which is usually required in criminal cases … the memo part, not the scathing part … as a recommendation from the prosecution for Gilbert Arenas’ formal sentencing at 9:00 am this Friday. Arenas’ defense team, in turn, released a 200-plus page memo, which includes 32 testimonial letters pleading for sentencing leniency from Judge Robert E. Morin.
As part of Arenas’ plea deal on January 15th, prosecutors agreed to recommend low-end sentencing guidelines, which would include six-months or less in prison. In his memo, Kavanaugh specifically recommends three months in jail, three years probation and 300 hours of community service. Arenas’ defense team requests “a term of probation with a community service component,” but no jail time … obviously. Of course, it’s always been known that Judge Morin could put Arenas in prison for pretty much however long he pleases, but less than the 5-year maximum sentence for a felony gun charge.
But back to this “scathing” part. In the memo Kavanaugh writes, “The defendant’s conduct since the time of the incident establishes that he has shown little genuine remorse for anything other than how this incident may affect his career.”
Uh oh. The fun-loving, “who me?”, revisionist/contradictory history Gilbert Arenas who has continued to rear his ugly head might be coming back to haunt him in the form of increased time behind bars.
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