On December 19, 2009, NBA star Gilbert Arenas and fellow Washington Wizards player Javaris Crittenton got into a heated argument over a card game, exchanging violent threats. (Arenas maintains that his were made in jest.) After Crittenton challenged him to a fistfight, Arenas told his younger teammate he was too old to fight him, but he’d burn his SUV or shoot him in the face instead. Crittenton answered that he’d shoot Arenas in his surgically repaired left knee.
Two days later, before practice at Washington, D.C.’s Verizon Center, Arenas placed four unloaded handguns on the chair in front of Crittenton’s cubicle in the team’s locker room with a note that read, “PICK 1.”
“You said you were going to shoot me,” Arenas reminded Crittenton. “So pick one.” Crittenton then flung one of the tendered guns across the floor and withdrew from his backpack one of his own (whether it was loaded is unclear), which he displayed for Arenas, holding it “below his waist and pointed downward,” according to the government’s proffer of facts. Any tension quickly dissipated, and soon the two were bantering together in the Jacuzzi.
That’s what Arenas did. Here are some things he did not do:
• hurt anyone;
• fire a gun;
• own illegal firearms;
• bring a loaded gun into D.C. or the Wizards’ locker room, let alone brandish one in a threatening manner. He didn’t even own any ammunition for the weapons in question.
On January 15, 2010, Arenas pled guilty to one felony count of carrying a pistol without a license in the District of Columbia, punishable by up to a $5,000 fine and five years in jail. On March 26, D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert Morin sentenced the...