Agent Zero: Gilbert Arenas

It has been many years since I've celebrated a professional athlete. Really, not since I was a kid. Athletes have become a different species - physically freakish, nurtured to megalomania, rich, boring, and stupid.

Gilbert Arenas is worthy of attention. He's a good basketball player. He's a bizarre person. Take a look at this Esquire interview from November, 2006, and follow-up on Deadspin.com [one of the best sports blogs around]. Choice passages excerpted below:

ENTRY 8: UNUSUAL SLEEPING RITUALS SUBJECT [interviewed while playing two-man Halo in his bedroom]: You can't see very good. I'll sit down on the floor if you want.

OBSERVER: No, I can tell you like to play on the bed. I'll stay here.

SUBJECT: I just started sleeping in this bed after three years. I used to sleep over there.

OBSERVER: Where? On the couch?

SUBJECT: Yeah. I trained myself to sleep on the couch.

OBSERVER: Why would you do that?

SUBJECT: You know.

OBSERVER: Not really.

SUBJECT: I don't like women all up on me, touching me. So I get up and go.

OBSERVER: Yeah?

SUBJECT: Then they get up and go. [Subject points to the video-game screen.] Stay there. Wait for me behind that door.

OBSERVER: What door?

SUBJECT [shaking his head]: I discovered that women don't like that much.

More:

ENTRY 13: CONSTRICTED DIETARY HABITS On the road, I eat hamburgers every day. The team tries to get me to eat differently, but no. Burgers, burgers, burgers. I like burgers. McDonald's burgers. Wendy's burgers. Burger King burgers. There's this one place in Canada—I even look at the schedule to find out when we play there—best burger I've ever tasted. Real soft and sweet. I ate twelve of them in one night.

A little more:

ENTRY 15: SELF-IMPOSED COMMUNICATION BARRIERS When I get a new cell phone, first thing I do is turn it off and call from my house phone and leave stupid little messages to myself. Like: "It's me." "It's me." "This is Gilbert." "It's me." "It's Gilbert." I just fill it up, so no one can leave messages. If you don't, you leave for an hour and thirteen people have called. So there are thirteen new messages you have to listen to and it's like, Oh, man. I don't feel like hearing people's stories. Most people love leaving messages that they don't want to tell you in person. So I cut that off.

And finally:

ENTRY 19: SUBJECT HAS AN IDEA FOR A SHOE COMMERCIAL You know how I always throw my jersey into the stands after a game? In Washington, they just go crazy for it. So in this commercial, that's what I'm gonna do with my shoes. I've just hit a game winner, and I throw these shoes. Everyone starts to react, and you see everything in slow motion. Everyone's pushing, shoving, doing whatever it takes to try to get to these shoes. People from the 400 level, they're jumping off the ledge, they're missing the pile, hitting nothing but chairs, and you can just see in people's faces like, Ooooh, that hurt. While all this stuff's going on, one of the shoes pops out of the crowd, and a little girl gets it and she takes off. A couple of people see she has it, and they start chasing her, and she's looking back running—and then she gets clotheslined by a kid in a wheelchair. So he picks the shoe up and says—he's gonna have the only line in there—"They said I couldn't get it. Heh. Impossible is nothing." And then he rolls off.

[via The Basketball Jones]