Arenas, Crittenton Suspended For Remainder Of 2009-10 Season

Stern Bans Arenas, Crittenton For Remainder Of The Year


NBA commissioner David Stern suspended Washington Wizards guards Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton for the remainder of the NBA season Wednesday, and ESPN.com learned that Arenas has agreed not to appeal the punishment.

Stern's disciplinary actions were announced Wednesday afternoon after Arenas met face-to-face with Stern for the first time since the gun incident that put Arenas' future with the Wizards in doubt.

The Washington Post first reported the length of the Arenas suspension, and a source with knowledge of the meeting told ESPN.com that Arenas told Stern that he expects and deserves to be suspended for the rest of the season, which was believed to be the punishment Stern favored. It was unclear whether Crittenton also would decline to file an appeal.

"The NBA has conducted a thorough investigation of events relating to this matter," Stern said. "It is not disputed that, following an argument on the team's flight home from a game in Phoenix, both Mr. Arenas and Mr. Crittenton brought guns to the Verizon Center locker room and -- with other players and team personnel present or nearby -- displayed them to one another in a continuation of their dispute.

The players engaged in this conduct despite a specific rule set forth in the collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and the Players Association prohibiting players from possessing a weapon at an NBA facility, and reminders of this prohibition given annually by the NBA to players both in writing and in person.

"The issue here is not about the legal ownership and possession of guns, either in one's home or elsewhere. It is about possession of guns in the NBA workplace, which will not be tolerated," Stern said.

"I have met separately with Mr. Arenas and with Mr. Crittenton. Both have expressed remorse for their actions and an understanding of the seriousness of their transgressions. Both have volunteered to engage in community service in order to turn the lessons they have learned into an educational message for others. I accept fully the sincerity of their expressions of regret and intent to create something positive from this incident.

"Nevertheless, there is no justification for their conduct. Accordingly, I am today converting Mr. Arenas' indefinite suspension without pay to a suspension without pay for the remainder of the 2009-10 season, and am also suspending Mr. Crittenton without pay, effective immediately, for the remainder of the 2009-10 season."

The team said it supported Stern's ruling.

"Their poor judgment has also violated the trust of our fans and stands in contrast to everything Abe Pollin stood for throughout his life," the Wizards said in a statement.

"It is widely known that Mr. Pollin took the extraordinary step of changing the team name from 'Bullets' to 'Wizards' in 1997 precisely to express his abhorrence of gun violence in our community. We hope that this negative situation can produce something positive by serving as a reminder that gun violence is a serious issue."

Asked during a conference call what message the penalties sent, Stern said: "We mean what we say when we say that guns are prohibited from being in our buildings and on team business.

"You will be dealt with harshly because it's very potentially dangerous to our players, to the other players and to anyone else who might be involved."

Arenas -- just as Crittenton did Tuesday -- met with Stern in what was regarded as the final step before the league announces a finite length to Arenas' indefinite suspension.

"I felt that I should do something to keep Arenas from doing even further damage to himself and I told him that," Stern said. "We also try to protect [players] from doing things that are foolish and damaging. I felt that Gilbert was in the process of doing that and it was incumbent on me to stop it."

ESPN.com reported Friday that suspension lengths for Arenas and Crittenton would be announced this week in the wake of a Dec. 21 confrontation in the Wizards' locker room in which both players have admitted to displaying unloaded handguns.

Arenas entered a guilty plea Jan. 15 in District of Columbia Superior Court to a felony weapons possession charge after admitting to bringing four guns into the locker room following a heated argument with Crittenton during a card game on the team plane.

Arenas missed his 12th consecutive game Tuesday night after Stern announced an indefinite suspension on Jan. 6, Arenas' 28th birthday.

Arenas awaits criminal court sentencing on March 26. His sentence could range from probation and community service and a fine to a recommended prison term of up to six months.

The sentence Arenas receives is expected to be the determining factor for the Wizards regarding their intent to void the remaining four seasons of Arenas' $111 million contract, which is valued at just over $80 million. Many league and legal experts contend that the Wizards could not successfully attempt to void Arenas' contract unless he is forced to serve jail time during the NBA season.

Crittenton, who hasn't played a single minute for the Wizards this season, met with Stern on Tuesday after being sentenced to a year of unsupervised probation following his guilty plea to a misdemeanor gun charge. Prosecutors agreed to drop a second misdemeanor charge of attempted carrying a pistol without a license.

"[Union director] Billy [Hunter] has been consistent with his message and his tone of really kind of waiting until the NBA comes out with what their position will be going forward and until then we can't respond," players association president Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers told ESPN.com last week.

"It's never happened before, so there isn't anything you can match it to, per se," Fisher said. "If I was commissioner? Well, I'm not privy what he has to balance, what all is at stake in terms of what message he sends to fans, to sponsors, to team owners. So there's a lot more on his plate to contemplate before he makes a decision.

"We respect that process, but from a union perspective we have to protect the short-term and long-term rights of our members, and when members do wrong things or make mistakes, they'll be rightfully punished, and we're just here to make sure that that doesn't go beyond what it should be under the circumstances."

Stern said he and Hunter would meet in the coming weeks to perhaps build a stronger gun policy than the one in the collective bargaining agreement.

Wizards coach Flip Saunders told The Washington Post on Tuesday: "I think right now, the whole situation, we're all pretty much numb to the whole thing. We knew when it got to the point that it got to, nothing good was going to come out of it."



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Sources: ESPN, Washington Post, Google Maps

Gilbert Arenas Is Charged With Felony Gun Possession, Faces 5 Years

Wizards' Arenas Charged With Felony Gun Possession


Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas has been charged with a Felony in connection with last month's locker room confrontation with a teammate.

Arenas was charged Thursday with one count of carrying a pistol without a license.

The charges were filed in D.C. Superior Court in an "information," a document that generally signals a plea deal.

His lawyer had no immediate comment.

Arenas has said he kept multiple guns in his locker at the Verizon Center. He claims he wanted to keep them away from his children and didn't know it was illegal.

He says he took them out of the locker on Dec. 21 in a "misguided effort to play a joke" on a teammate.

Arenas has been suspended indefinitely by the NBA.


Sources: AP, NY Times, ESPN, NBC Sports

Gilbert Arenas Suspended Indefinitely! Possible Legal Ramifications

Arenas Suspended Indefinitely


The NBA has suspended the Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas indefinitely.

"Although it is clear that the actions of Mr. Arenas will ultimately result in a substantial suspension, and perhaps worse, his ongoing conduct has led me to conclude that he is not currently fit to take the court in an NBA game," commissioner David Stern said in a statement Wednesday. "Accordingly, I am suspending Mr. Arenas indefinitely, without pay, effective immediately pending the completion of the investigation by the NBA."

Every game Arenas ends up missing during the suspension will cost him $147,208.

The suspension comes after multiple media reports over the weekend said that a dispute over a gambling debt led to a conflict between Arenas and Javaris Crittenton.

Multiple sources told ESPN.com that an argument commenced during a card game on the team's overnight flight back to Washington from Phoenix on Dec. 19 and escalated into a heated exchange between Arenas and Crittenton. The Wizards had Dec. 20 off, but sources say hostilities between the two Wizards guards resumed Dec. 21 in the locker room on a practice day.

Sources say that Arenas, in response to what was said on the flight, placed the three guns on a chair near Crittenton's locker stall and invited him to pick one before practice on Dec. 21. Sources said that Crittenton subsequently let Arenas know that he had his own gun.

The Washington Post reported in Sunday's editions that Arenas, according to sources, was expecting Crittenton to see the guns on his chair as a joke based on the earlier back-and-forth on the plane, during which Crittenton allegedly said that he would shoot Arenas in his surgically repaired knee. But Crittenton, according to Post, reacted angrily and tossed one of the guns to the floor, saying he had his own.

In his statement, Arenas confirmed that the guns were brought out at the Dec. 21 practice.

"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," the statement read. "I brought them without any ammunition into the District of Columbia, mistakenly believing that the recent change in the D.C. 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 D.C. 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."

Arenas met with law enforcement officials on Monday to explain why he had guns at the Verizon Center last month.

Arenas' lawyer issued a statement saying that the player met with federal prosecutors at the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia and detectives of the Metropolitan Police Department for more than two hours.

At the NBA's request, the firearms language was bolstered during collective bargaining in 2005. Players are subject to discipline if they bring guns to the arena or practice facility, or even an offsite promotional appearance.



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Arenas, Crittenton Face-Off With Guns Over Gambling Debt (Reports)

Did Gilbert Arenas and Jarvis Crittenton really battle it out (with guns drawn) over a Gambling debt or is this story just hot air?







Arenas, Crittenton Dispute Begins Over Card Game


A dispute that began on the team plane and resumed more than 24 hours later in the team's locker room between Washington Wizards guards Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton is at the center of an investigation by local and federal authorities into Arenas' recent admission of gun possession on Wizards property, according to sources close to the situation.

Multiple sources told ESPN.com that an argument commenced during a card game on the team's overnight flight back to Washington from Phoenix on Dec. 19 and escalated into a heated exchange between Arenas and Crittenton. The Wizards had Dec. 20 off, but sources say the hostilities resumed Dec. 21 in the locker room on a practice day.

Sources say that Arenas, in response to what was said on the flight, placed three guns he owns on a chair near Crittenton's locker stall and invited him to pick one before practice on Dec. 21. Sources said that Crittenton subsequently let Arenas know that he had his own gun.

The New York Post, quoting league security sources, reported in Friday's editions that Arenas and Crittenton pulled guns on each other over a gambling debt during the pre-practice confrontation at the Verizon Center.

The Washington Post, in a story posted on its Web site Friday night, quoted Arenas as saying, "That's not the real story." The newspaper also reported that the argument between Arenas and Crittenton was over "who had the bigger gun" and that there was never any intent to physically harm Crittenton, according to "a person who has spoken with Arenas recently."

It is not known how many other Wizards players were in the locker room at the time of the clash. The Wizards and Arenas have maintained since Dec. 24, when the team publicly confirmed that Arenas had stored three guns in a locked box in his locker, that the firearms were unloaded.

If either Arenas or Crittenton is found to have brandished a gun against his teammate, long-term suspensions and heavy fines from NBA commissioner David Stern would appear to be likely, given the ever-rising levels of Stern's distaste for any hint of violence in the league in the wake of the infamous Indiana-Detroit brawl in November 2004.

The league office, though, is expected to wait to see whether local or federal charges are filed in the case before determining the scale of potential punishments.

Arenas spoke briefly with reporters Friday afternoon following Washington's practice and also made numerous statements via his Twitter account disputing the New York Post's report, which alleges that Crittenton became angry at Arenas for refusing to make good on a gambling debt, prompting Arenas to pull a gun first and Crittenton to respond by grabbing his own gun.

The Washington Post reported Friday afternoon that Arenas is threatening to sue the New York Post.The Washington Post also spoke to Arenas' father, Gilbert Arenas Sr., who said: "From the respect of guns being pulled in the locker room and at each other... that's ludicrous. [Gilbert Jr.] bringing the guns to the locker room to keep away from his kids, that's true. [But] Gil did not pull a gun on anybody. That's about all that I can say."

Arenas eventually turned his three guns in to team security and later told reporters -- after a CBSSports.com report on Christmas Eve revealed that Arenas was being investigated for violating league rules on gun possession -- that he brought them to the workplace because he no longer wanted them in his house after the birth of his third child in early December.

District of Columbia police officials immediately began looking into the matter and announced in a statement Wednesday, without naming any names or providing further details, that they have begun assisting the U.S. Attorney's Office in a joint probe into "an allegation that weapons were located inside a locker room at the Verizon Center."

Through a series of tweets, Arenas appeared Friday to be trying to downplay the severity of the situation in his usual glib manner. But the potential range of punishments would figure to be severe given the stricter-than-usual gun laws in the District of Columbia and the NBA's rules forbidding gun possession on league property.

Although no action from the league office is expected until the legal process plays out, which is the NBA norm, Stern is bound to take an especially dim view of the whole episode in deference to late Wizards owner Abe Pollin, who changed the team's nickname from Bullets to Wizards in 1997 in part because he was so profoundly affected by the assassination of former Israeli prime minister and close friend Yitzhak Rabin. Until his death in November, Pollin was as close to Stern as any NBA owner.

"There is an active investigation by D.C. law enforcement authorities, which we are monitoring closely," NBA spokesman Tim Frank said Friday. "We are not taking any independent action at this time."

The Wizards, in a statement issued Friday, said: "We take this situation and the ongoing investigation very seriously. We are continuing to cooperate fully with the proper authorities and the NBA and will have no further comment at this time."

In Friday's New York Post report, Wizards president Ernie Grunfeld is quoted as saying: "It's in the hands of the authorities. We're going to get to the bottom of this, if there is a bottom to this."

The controversy is the latest and possibly biggest setback in Washington's highly disappointing 10-20 start. Arenas is averaging 22.7 points and 6.9 assists after missing much of the past two seasons because of multiple surgeries on his left knee, but there is already considerable curiosity -- not only in the media but among rival teams watching the drama unfold -- whether the Wizards will eventually try to void the remainder of Arenas' mammoth six-year, $111 million contract because of this serious nature of this incident.

Arenas may not play Saturday against the San Antonio Spurs because of soreness in his left knee, Wizards head coach Flip Saunders told The Washington Post on Friday. Saunders would not comment on the reported dispute between Arenas and Crittenton.

Crittenton has not played all season because of an ankle injury and declined comment Friday when reached by the Washington Post. Crittenton's new agent, Mark Bartelstein, also declined comment Friday.



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