WIZARDS

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As the NBA's fourth-leading scorer last season, Gilbert Arenas and his 29.3 points per game average led the Washington Wizards to Game 7 of the first round of the playoffs vs. LeBron James and the Cavaliers. Entering his sixth year in the league, Arenas will blog on NBA.com throughout the 2006-07 campaign, a season which Gilbert dubs "The Takeover."

The "2" and the "0" of the 2-6-0.
Mitchell Layton/NBAE/Getty Images

I have a story that’s better than all the other stories.

We have a section in our locker room called the 2-6-0. It’s DeShawn (No. 2), Antonio (No. 6) and me. We sit in the corner section.

Andray Blatche, he’s that rookie. He’s a second-year player, but he’s that player that loves just to talk back to everybody. Anything you say, like you tell him, “Go get me towels.”

“Go get your own."

That’s him.

So he had beef with Antonio and DeShawn. DeShawn was like, “If you got a problem with me, then you got a problem with Antonio.”

Antonio was like, “If you got a problem with me, you got a problem with Gilbert.”

So Andray was like, “Man, I don’t care what y’all are going to do."

I guess they were just exchanging stuff. Doing silly stuff back and forth, so I stayed out of it.

One day, I come here like 10 minutes before practice and I always walk into the weight room first. Antonio was like, “Uhh, did you just get here?”

I was like, “Yeah.”

He goes, “Come on and sit down.”

I was like, “What? What happened?”

“Come on and sit down.”

He was like, “Andray Blatche.”

“What’d you all do?”

He was like, “Uhh, how do I say this? He threw all the clothes from your locker into the cold tub.”

I was like, “Huh? What do you mean my stuff?”

“Uhh, he thought … because DeShawn threw his in the cold tub … he thought you did it. But I told him that you wasn’t even here yet. I said, ‘Gilbert is not here yet, so he didn’t have nothing to do with it.’”

And Andray was like, “This is called Gilbert 101. If you want beef, you start beef.”

Right? So I go into the locker room and all my stuff is in there all wet. So I go, “Oh, I see you’re waking up a sleepy giant?”

Dray was like, “As long as you don’t mess with my car, I don’t care.”

I was like, “Are you sure about that? Because you know me, I go overboard.”

“As long as you don’t mess with my car, I don’t care.”

“All right. Fine.”

Let me just say this, after what we've done to him, I don’t think he wants war anymore.

Oh and he bought some nice little dress shoes for his suits, well I made them look like girls shoes and cut the tops off of them.

So, I don’t think he wants war anymore. He doesn’t talk back anymore.

Yeah, so, that’s the story of the week.

We beat them and held them off. That was good for us. For the last three years, they beat us up there and we beat them down here. That’s been going on for a while now.

I’ve been shooting the ball well ever since the chiropractor came in and basically popped my shoulder back into place. For everybody who says a shoulder injury does not hurt, it hurts! Like, if Dwyane Wade comes back, he’s a brave man. I was playing with pain for a month and a half and mine was just out of place a little bit. Just my clavicle was pushed in. I just thought it was sore the whole time, I didn’t know it was actually out of place. So they popped it in and when they popped it in, all that pain just released and I just went down there and started shooting and I was just back on target. So I was like, “Oh, OK. I’m back just like that?”

The next game it was a good 2-for-9 from three because they was just in-and-out. It was a good 2-for-9. I was hitting jumpers. The stroke was on. It was on lean, it was ready.

Let’s get that straight. It was a FOUL, people. He fouled me. He was riding me from the time I got the ball until I got into the lane.

It was an on-the-ground foul, so if the basket would have went in, it wouldn’t have counted. That’s what the argument was. It was a foul before the shot. So, I think everybody was arguing about the technical.

I asked another ref the next game, I was like, “I don’t know if you’ve seen the last game but, from what I was hearing from other people, he called him an bleeping idiot.” So he was like, “Well, then you get a tech.”

Coach Nellie says he didn’t say that, but, at the end of the day, we’ll take the win.

I’ve been there, done that. I’ve missed those free throws already. Let’s do something new. I’m not going to do that anymore. I already missed it.

I was telling them, “You guys go to your locker room. Go all the way to the locker room, start taking your shower, go take the shower, get on that bus, it’s going to be a long ride to the next city because I’m not going to miss these three. It’s game over.”

So that counts as a game-winner. It’s not a buzzer-beater, but it’s a game-winner.

It’s very important because the sorry teams out there in the league kept doubling me and you know, that gets frustrating when they’re scared to play you man-to-man and they want to double you all day. That’s kind of frustrating. But since Antawn and Caron are back, even if they double team me, I feel confident when I pass them the ball that they’re going to hit that shot so I’ll give it up now.

It’s going to be a good game. It’s going to be 50-50 in the crowd because everyone loves the Knicks. Eddy Curry is playing great, Marbury is coming back to life again and we have to watch out because it is a dangerous team.

We got to get a win at Miami because those guys are playing great. They beat the hell out of the Bulls the other day. I know they’re coming to form now so we got to hurry up and see if we can get a win down there.

I’m just a Shaq fan, so anything he does I’m like, “Oh, Shaq is back.”

I think this is the first time since I’ve been with Washington that we’re going to spend more than one day in Miami. We always play them on a back-to-back, so we never get to just hang out in Miami. I might hit the beach, go ahead and show my beach body off.

Right now it’s all playoff mentality. Everyone you’re playing with is still fighting for a playoff spot no matter who you’re playing, so you just got to go out and perform every night.

I couldn’t even tell my friends about that, it was so small of a role. His role was so small I couldn’t even tell my friends. I couldn’t even brag.

Yeah, my dad was on TV, he was a ref. I was like, “Look! That was him right there. Sorry. You missed it.”

My dad was excited about the role, I guess he thought it was going to be bigger than it was.

At the time we didn’t have TiVo back then so whatever we seen, that was it. We missed it.

He was like, “That was me! Right there, in the black and white!”

I was like, “Really? Grrrrreeeattt.”

I’m the face of the campaign. Haha, oh man, how the hell did that happen?

Wow, you know, I’m so honored.

It’s for everybody who has a story to tell, you know, how they’ve been doubted. That’s what the campaign’s about. For everybody who started off in my situation. You know, impossible is nothing. Whatever you dream you can do. Whatever you believe in you can do. That’s what the campaign is.

We drew up our own story. I already drew mine up. I’m kind of impressed with my talent … I drew a hell of a stick figure.

I want to clear something up, because there is some confusion with me and DeShawn’s antics. When I do my hands after I shoot, when I shake them, what that means is it’s cooking. It’s hot. That’s what that means. I’m frying them.

When DeShawn does his hand over his face, it’s not Tony Yayo. It means, “I can’t feel my face,” from Lil Wayne.

It means he’s on fire in some sort of silly way.