Last week there had been talk of an “incident,” never fully clarified, between the entourage of Ja Morant and some members of the Pacers’ staff. In particular friends of the star of the Memphis Grizzlies allegedly threatened staff members with a gun, who reported it to the NBA. The league investigated, but found no evidence of the presence of the gun, which was allegedly pointed, according to the account of the alleged victims, from a car in which Morant himself was also sitting. In the past few hours Gilbert Arenas, someone who certainly knows a thing or two about gun threats, wanted to give the Memphis point guard some advice while he was a guest on “Game Theory with Bomani Jones”.
This is “wise” advice, so to speak, even unusual advice from Arenas. Certainly not in keeping with the character and his record. Several years ago, when he played in Washington, Agent Zero was in fact involved in a “Mexican-style standoff” with guns in the Wizards’ locker room. On the other side of the weapon was. Javaris Crittenton, with whom Arenas claimed to have a gambling credit. After a few verbal threats, Arenas brought a gun into the locker room to intimidate his comrade, but to his surprise he pulled two more guns out of his bag. The shooting was prevented by teammates and staff members who intervened.
Young people do stupid things when they are young. What I want to say to Ja is: look at LeBron James and his entourage. It’s not you who has to protect them, they have to protect you. When you are young you have to think well about the people you surround yourself with.
I don’t know why when we come to the NBA we want to appear a little tougher than we are. It should be the opposite: we worked our butts off to get there, to get away from delinquency. We have to be consistent. You don’t have to be the street guy and pretend to be tough-I mean, we don’t really want to fight. We definitely don’t want to fight.
When the host then mentioned “his” gun incident, Arenas jokingly responded:
See, I can talk about it, I can talk about it now. I know it was all fake on my part, I was trying to be tough. I was calling a bluff, I was calling a bluff.
“But, as we later learned, the guy was holding aces.” Jones replied. “Factual!” replied Agent Zero amid general laughter.
Workplace safety advice with Gilbert Arenas pic.twitter.com/6p8I3AoNT7
– Game Theory with Bomani Jones (@GameTheoryHBO) February 14, 2023