Airbrushing Gilbert out of the Wizards

Like some member of the Soviet Politburo who has fallen from grace, Gilbert Arenas is being shoved out of the limelight by the Wizards, who must now confront a future without their star guard, but still carrying around his gigantic salary cap hit like an anchor.

Check out this video of the Wizards taking down the 6th street banner of Gilbert Arenas just outside the Verizon Center. The metaphors need not be mentioned. Watch it . Gilbert has also shut down his Twitter account , the site of some of his bizarre and unrepentent comments about the gun scandal. It was those comments, as much as the infamous "finger pistol" incident, that probably enraged NBA Commissioner David Stern , leading to Gilbert's indefinite suspension and perhaps worse.

The New Jersey Nets have banned gambling on their team plane in reaction to the Gil & guns scandal, which began with a gambling dispute between Arenas and Javaris Crittenton . The Wizards have now done the same . This seems rather silly to me. I'm not a gambler myself, but NBA players have been gambling for years [pretty much every team has gamblers on it] without gunplay entering into it. The problem here is the gun culture, not the gambling culture.

Gilbert's meltdown and eventual disappearance from the Wizards is just another bad break for his cursed franchise. Of course, you have to make your own luck sometimes and the Wiz don't do a very good job of that. Anyway, Deshawn Stevenson said this latest bad turn of luck could be the last straw for the team's players and he doesn't think they can take any more bad news. Typically, Antawn Jamison spoke out against that sort of fatalism and defeatism.

Read it all at

http://www.dcprosportsreport.com/articles/washington-wizards/airbrushing-gilbert-out-of-the-wizards.html