Arenas opens heart in interview

If you haven’t already, you need to read Sports Illustrated’s Sam Amick’s interview with Gilbert Arenas.

Arenas talks at length about a variety of subjects, addressing his past, present and future and acknowledging that he needed to change on a personal level before he could move forward following the much talked about ‘gun incident’.

Highlights of the interview include:

“Someone close to me told me I lost myself a long time ago when I invented Agent Zero, and I didn’t understand what the person was talking about at the time. He’s like, “You were basically on the road down anyway, the image you were putting out meant you were going to get killed at some point.” Now it’s like, “Yeah, you were right.”

- Gilbert on resetting his mentality.

“So I decided I’m not here to prove anybody wrong anymore. I’m just here to prove myself right. I’m not here to chase the money, to chase stats. Now what you have is a basketball player who’s ready to play

- Gil’s mindset.

I’m not going to lie, I feel so much better. I’m jumping and moving like before I got injured, like it’s basically ’06 again. My explosiveness, my jumping ability, my quickness — it feels like I never got injured.

- Arenas on the platelet rich procedure he underwent for his knees and hips.

“I think I’m seeing life how I saw it before I got famous, and that’s hard to do sometimes. It’s hard to break yourself back down. I’m loving life.”

“Just got the love of the game back. That’s never going to leave. I just love the game of basketball.”

- Arenas talking about his life away from basketball.

“He was saying all the other teams that he decided he was going to go to, and will I come there? I said, ‘Of course. If you want me to play, I’ll come with you.’
“What do you do when somebody dominant like him wants to play with you? He still believes in me”

- Gil talking about Dwight Howard and his decision over what team he should play for.

“All I know is I’ve got a Daddy-Son Donut Day on the 24th. You go to the school, and you have donuts. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

- Classic Gil.

It seems from the interview as though Arenas is a lot happier where he’s at, both mentally and physically and he’s been able to ground himself and re-establish his priorities. He’s shown a lot of humility and maturity during the interview and appears to understand himself better than he has done in the past.

Arenas has indicated that he’s happy to ply his trade in the D-League if he feels it’s the right thing to do which strikes me as a decision Gil wouldn’t have made before. And if you look at the fact that he plays YMCA pick-up ball as well as being willing to play in the NBA’s developmental league, it looks like Gilbert Arenas’ love for the game is back.