Stat Line: 24 points (8-16 from the field, 4-5 for three), 3 assists, 1 rebound, 0 steals, and 0 rebounds in 27:47 (+5).

To start this off, let’s go back to a quote from Gil yesterday:

“I’m an assassin. I get buckets. I haven’t played in a long time, but my shot is still there. When I come off the bench, there’s going to be some trouble.”

In his first stint off the bench, I’d say Gilbert was playing more like a sniper, and an accurate one at that, hitting long distance shots like this one:

In the second half, he cooled off quite a bit. It would’ve been nearly impossible to replicate his first half barrage, but it was clear that he tailed off near the end of the game. Trainers recently cleared him to play up to 30 minutes a game, but there’s a noted difference between being healthy enough to play 30 minutes a game, and being able to play 30 minutes effectively. You could see the same thing happening when he was being held to 25 minutes. In his first game back, he stared off great but he slowed down considerably by the end of the game. Then by his fourth game back against Philly, he was finishing stronger than he started in his 25 minutes.

Today was just another step in the recovery process. As each day comes he’s getting better and better. With his strong start we saw that he was capable of doing much of what we remember of the pre-injury Gil, as he continues to work his way back we’ll see more of what we remember most about him most–his strong finishes.

If you’re a diehard NBA fan, you probably know Dave McMenamin as the writer behind NBA.com’s Rookie Rankings. Diehard Gilbert fans also know Dave as the person responsible for making his blog happen. The thoughts are pure Gilbert, but Dave is the one who transcribes his thoughts and makes it happen when you see his blog. In an interview with Green Bandwagon, Dave talked about what it’s like working with Gil on his blog:

Green Bandwagon: What is the Gilbert Arenas experience like?

Dave McMenamin: Your question reminds me of that Nike commercial, “The Michael Vick Experience”, where people were strapped into a rollercoaster-style seat suspended from a track hovering over a football field and shot off on a round-about route eluding would-be tacklers. If “The Gilbert Arenas Experience” was a ride, sadly it would just involve a lot of text messages that just say “Blog” blowing up your phone as late as midnight and as early as 7 a.m., copious Google searches of the words “Gilbert Arenas” to see what bloggers are writing about him to gather material for the next time you talk to him and painfully editing out a lot of really funny stuff he blogs about that are too inappropriate for NBA.com. But really, it’s awesome.

The Washington Wizards Blog has some quotes from Gilbert who talked to the media after practice today.  This is the first time that Gilbert has talked to reporters since making his comeback.  Here’s a little bit of what he said:

On Charles Barkley’s comments:
“It’s his opinion. Obviously he’s going to be watching. They have LeBron (James). We have Antawn (Jamison), myself and Caron (Butler). We’ll take our chances. We’ll take our chances.”

On his silence:
“I didn’t want to hear, ‘How is your knee?’ ‘How does it feel to be back?’ ‘Are you still going to opt out?’. Let’s worry about the playoffs; then I’ll be back at it.”

You may have seen NBA TV’s “Inside the Mind” promos with players like Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and Dwight Howard.  Here’s Gilbert’s version.  If the “I enjoy breaking somebody’s heart” line doesn’t get you, you’re just not ready for the playoffs:

When Gilbert said in his last blog that he wouldn’t be “blogging for a bit” he obviously meant 4 days because just tonight he put up a new entry about the Wizards first round nemesis, the Cavaliers:

Now that we’re playing those guys again, I think everybody is going to have their eyes on it. Especially since the media is hyping it up.

“Did you see what Gilbert said in his blog????”

I put that in my blog a week ago. I said we wanted to play Cleveland so we needed to win some games. Then the four and the five seeds were locked in yesterday and it was set for us to play the Cavs and everybody was like, “Oh, Washington is playing Cleveland, Gilbert must have just blogged!”

NOW I’m blogging. This is the updated blog.

After some talk about the Wizards young guns and his Halo team, Gilbert explained why he’ll be sticking to the team-colored Gil II Zeros for the rest of the season:

I got the big call from Stu. Once Stu gives you the call, you got to listen. At first I thought, “OK, they’ll fine me and I can just bill adidas.” But then Stu hit me with the word that I didn’t want to hear: suspension. I thought about playing a little reverse psychology on him. I was going to wear a new non-team colors GilIIZeros shoe after the phone call in my next game. Then he was going to call me back and be like, “You’re going to be suspended for the next game” when the thing is that I was going to sit out the next game anyway. You see? You feel me? But, I would end up getting fined too. And I didn’t want to get the fine and the suspension. He just told me to wear the team color shoes from now on. I wore the chrome and silver ones, the Undrcrwn version, so I hit him with, “Come on, Stu … chrome is the new white!” But I don’t think he was falling for that.

There’s a lot of other great stuff in the blog that you just have to read.  I’d quote some more of it, but I don’t want to take away from the stuff that I don’t quote.  It’s that good.