With a 111 million dollar contract, Gilbert can buy a lot of gifts for others this season, but here’s the gifts that I think we’d all like to see Gilbert get this Thursday:

12 statues waxing

11 Etch-A-Sketches

10 pranks on Nick

9 old school albums (Mint Condition? Really?)

8 lucky coin flips

7 hours of Halo

6 trips to Asia

5 SHOTS FOR THREE!!!

4 finger tattoos

3 tanks for sharks

2 shakes on Kobe

And a clean bill of health for his knee.

As you’ve probably heard, Wizards coach Eddie Jordan is out in Washington.  Eddie Jordan is the only coach that Gilbert has played for in his time in Washington.  With Eddie as a coach, Gilbert turned into a 3 time All-Star and helped lead the Wizards out of the dregs of the NBA.  They’ve had their differences at times, but they enjoyed a lot of success together.

Moving forward, it’s going to be interesting to see what role Gilbert Arenas has in picking the next coach.  You have to figure that at least tangentially he will have an impact, because it would make no sense on Ernie Grunfeld’s part to get a coach that can’t maximize the franchise player’s talents.  But we’ve seen numerous times in the past where star players have played a role in deciding who would takeover the reigns of their team and I don’t expect this situation to be much different.

Imagine this scenario: Let’s say Avery Johnson becomes the front runner for the Wizards job.  Gilbert, as you know, is an Arizona alum just like Mavericks guard Jason Terry who played under Avery Johnson.  If they talked about Avery Johnson over the off-season and Terry gave Gilbert a less than glowing review (which sounds like a pretty safe bet, given how Avery’s tenure ended in Dallas), then Gilbert would probably voice some concerns about Avery becoming the new coach.  And if the star player is less than sold on the new guy, than it’s going to be a really hard sell for the rest of the team.

To win Gilbert over, the new coach is going to have to do two critical things.

1. Have an up-tempo offense: Gilbert has always been a force pushing the fast break for the Wizards.  Fast-break offenses are a lot like gummy bears in that once you get a taste of it, it’s hard to be satisfied with anything else.
2. Understand Gilbertology: Any coach coming in has to understand that Gilbert has a little different outlook on life so you have to coach him a little differently.  I’m not saying that they should cater to him by any means, but they do need to understand that you can’t do all of the same things that you would do with other players.

Needless to say, things are about to get interesting.

As we’ve been telling you for quite a while, today was the big day for the release of FreeDarko Presents: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac. This is of course relevant for all Gilbertologists out there because Gilbert is the focus of one many essays in the book (you can read an excerpt of it here) and Gilbert himself wrote the foreword for the book. It’s a must read for any Gilbert fans out there.

I went to Borders today to check out the new book and I have to say that it’s quite possible that the book has exceeded my already lofty expectations.  The foreword by Arenas is great.  It might not be as goofy as some of his blog posts, but you can rest assured that his quirky nature still shines through.  Big Baby Bellafonte did a tremendous job on the illustrations in the book and if you’ve ever read FreeDarko, than you know that the writing doesn’t disappoint either.

I was literally thiiiis close to buying the book right then and there, but I decided against it since the copy that I should have the copy that I pre-ordered by Thursday.  That’s right, even though I knew I had a copy of the book on the way, I almost bought another one because I didn’t want to wait two more days.  It’s seriously that good.

There’s going to be a lot more on the book in the coming days and week (what else are we going to talk about?) once I get a chance to take a deeper look at it.  Until then, here’s the place to post your thoughts on the book if you’ve gotten a chance to take a look at the book.

If you keep up with other Wizards blogs, you know that today is the day that Wizards bloggers have submitted their previews for the upcoming season for CelticsBlog.  If you haven’t been, I’d highly recommend checking out Bullets Forever, Truth About It, Hoops Addict, and Hoops Avenue for their previews.  I chose not to sign up because this isn’t really a team blog since it only covers Gilbert Arenas, but I still wanted to give you the readers some kind of a preview for what we can expect from Gilbert in the upcoming season.

Player Name: Gilbert Arenas
Last Years Record: 6-7
Key Losses: 62 games due to injury
Key Additions: A one million dollar pool

1. What significant moves were made during the offseason?

Obviously, the biggest move of the off-season was re-signing with the Wizards for $111 million over six years, which should keep him in the District for just about the rest of his playing career.  Many have raised doubts over whether or not it was the best move on the part of the Wizards to sign a player who has had injury issues over the last few years to such a large contract, but Gilbert’s career has always been about proving the doubters wrong, expect more of the same this season.

That is, once he gets back to form.  The other major move made during the off-season was the move back to rehab room after undergoing surgery last month which will keep him out for the start of the season.  Recently, he said that he thinks he can be back by late-November, but December/January looks like a more realistic date for his return.

Oh, and he also got engaged.  I guess that counts as a move.

2. What are Gilbert’s biggest strengths?

Ask people all around the league and they’ll tell you that Gilbert is one of the most explosive players in the league.  His devastating first step allows him to beat his defenders and get easy buckets and trips to the free throw line.  All those easy buckets and free throws pile up and have helped him become one of the best scorers in the league, finishing in the top 10 in points per game 3 times in his career.

In addition, Gilbert has also developed into one of the deadliest shooters from the beyond the arc, forcing defenders to respect his perimeter ability as well as his ability to get to the rim making him a matchup nightmare for defenders.  He usually uses those drives to the rim early in the game, but when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, his ability to bury clutch outside shots have made him into a star in the NBA.

An underappreciated aspect of Gilbert’s game is his rebounding ability.  Many people focus on his points and assists, but rarely do people bring up that he’s averaged 4.2 rebounds per game over his career.  That’s an exceptionally high number of boards for a point guard.

3. What is Gilbert’s biggest weakness?

Gilbert’s greatest flaw is his defense.  Some people will look at his 1.8 steals per game average and assume that he’s doing a good job, but most those come from jumping passing lanes rather than tough, on the ball defense.  He took some steps last year towards getting better on defensive side of the ball, but he still has to improve some more if he wants to help the Wizards become an elite defensive team.

4. What are the goals for Gilbert this season?

The big thing Gilbert has to do this season is prove that he can get healthy.  It’s been almost 17 months since he was first injured and in that time he’s had three different surgeries to help get his knee back to normal and so far, nothing has worked out.  At times, there have been flashes, but he’s yet to return to the form that we’ve come to know and love from before the time he was injured.  He has to make sure that he doesn’t try to rush back this season before he’s ready and risk further injury.  The last thing any of us need is yet another setback in his recovery.

If he can do that successfully, the next goal for Gilbert is to try and get the Wizards into the playoffs.  The Wizards will probably face some struggles early oAren without himself and Brendan Haywood, so once he comes back, he’ll have to help get the Wizards back into the playoff picture in an Eastern Conference which looks stronger than it has in previous seasons.  He probably won’t be able to play at the same level that he did before he was injured right off the bat, but even an 85% effective Gilbert Arenas can go a long way in getting the Wizards in the playoff hunt and possibly back into the second round for the first time since 2005.

5. Is that “Saved by Zero” commercial by Toyota hurting Gilbert’s reputation?

Absolutely!  Judging by the outrage, I’d say that people are mighty fed up with this annoying 30 second bit.  The more Toyota plays it, the more people are going to not only get mad at the commercial, but at being saved and more importantly, at anything involving zero, including Agent Zero.  So please Toyota, for the love of all that’s good and decent please yank this ad before everyone subconsciously starts to hate Gilbert Arenas for no good reason.

[NOTE: Before I begin, I'd just like to offer a quick apology.  In the last post, I said that I hoped that Gilbert had a "better surgeon this time around."  That was a poor choice of words.  Ultimately, the surgeon that performed all of Gilbert's isn't responsible for any of the problems that have taken place over the last 17 months.  The knee is a tricky joint and even the finest surgery can lead to complicatons later on down the road.  Placing the blame on him was an incredibly short-sighted response to a multi-faceted problem.  Now, with that said, let's return to our original programming.]

Over the last two days, I’ve struggled with what I’ve wanted to say in the wake of the news that Gilbert Arenas underwent another knee surgery.  It seems like whenever I try to write something out, it comes out as some rambling post that doesn’t make any sense, or it ends up sounding like some weird, written-out, Gilbert-ized version of LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE.

I’m still not sure that I’ve been able to process it all, but I have been looking around and seeing what everyone else has been saying about what’s happened.  The feeling that I’ve gotten from a lot from Wizard fans is a sense of frustration.  Frustration that Gilbert still isn’t healthy after 17 months and two surgeries.  Frustration that the team won’t be able to show what they can do when they’re healthy for a whole season…again.  Frustration that the team just spent $111 million on a player that won’t be healthy to start the season.  Frustration that many within the organization knew that his rehab wasn’t going well and yet no on the outside had any idea until he had the surgery.  Frustration that he might not be the same ever again.

There’s a lot to be upset about, and understandably, many have tried to put the blame on someone.  Whether it’s Gilbert, management, the training staff, Gerald Wallace, or a combination of all them, it seems like we’re all trying to find a scapegoat for this saga.  The reality is, no one is at fault here.  Unless LeBron is paying someone off inside the organization to keep Gilbert on the mend (can we get someone to investigate that?), I don’t think anyone can say that they’re not trying their hardest to get Agent Zero back to 100%.  It just hasn’t worked out yet.  The only thing we can do right now is sit and wait, just like Gilbert is doing right now.