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Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas opens up about his 50-game suspension during the 2009-10 season in Netflix’s Untold documentary, “Shooting Guards.”
The documentary revisits the time Arenas and Javaris Crittenton were teammates with the Washington Wizards and possessed guns in the Wizards home locker room.
Then NBA commissioner David Stern first handed Arenas an indefinite suspension after Arenas pointed his index finger at teammates pretending to shoot them before a game Jan. 5, 2010, at Philadelphia.
Stern said at the time Arenas was “not currently fit to take the court.”
Arenas later received the 50-game suspension for the remainder of that 2009-10 season. The former Arizona star said in the documentary he believes the lengthy suspension was for essentially transporting guns from Phoenix to Washington D.C.
“The secret that nobody heard until right now. The real reason I think I was suspended for 50 games was the idea of how I got the guns to Washington, D.C.,” Arenas says in the documentary.
“And what it was I was using NBA planes to, the word they use, ‘traffic guns,’ from Arizona to Virginia, to my home and I don’t think the NBA wanted that to get out.”
Arenas felt at the worst he’d receive a seven-game suspension.
“We didn’t get suspended for actual guns in the locker room,” Arenas later said. “I got suspended 50 games for my behavior.”
Arenas added, “Did I deserve it? Yeah.”
Arenas said he had more than 450 guns he called “a collection” and that he bought guns from the father of his girlfriend while in college at Arizona.
“Where I got my guns from is Arizona,” Arenas said. “It was one of those states where you go in and you say, ‘I need a rocket launcher,’ and they say, ‘Hey, here you go.’”
Arenas and Crittenton got into an argument over a card game on a flight to Phoenix during a road trip for the Wizards. Washington played the Phoenix Suns on Dec. 19, 2009, in the second of a back-to-back after winning at Golden State.
JaVale McGee, who later played one season for Phoenix in 2021-22, was in the card game, Crittenton said. The Wizards ended that four-game road trip with a 121-95 loss to the Suns.
Arenas recalls buying guns in Arizona whenever the Wizards played in Phoenix against the Suns.
“So whenever we landed in Phoenix, the first thing I do, go to the gun place, get it, put it on the bus, headed to the airport and boom, we’re gone,” Arenas said. “For the most part, no one even knew that I had them.”
Crittenton was also suspended for the rest of the 2009-10 season for what wound up being 38 games.
Taken in the first round of the 2007 draft out of Georgia Tech, Crittenton battled injuries and didn’t play that 2009-10 season for the Wizards.
Crittenton later was sentenced 23 years in prison for the murder of Julian Jones in 2011, but the sentence was reduced to 10 years. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2015.
Jones was 22 years old and a mother of four. Crittenton attempted to shoot a gang member on August 19, 2011, he believed robbed him, but inadvertently killed Jones while in the Atlanta area.
Crittenton was released in 2023. He only played two NBA seasons (2007-09).
Have opinions about the current state of the Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at dmrankin@gannett.com or contact him at 480-810-5518. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @DuaneRankin.
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