Here’s the quote that everyone is going to be talking about from Gilbert’s latest blog:

The future is the future. I want to be back in Washington, but weird things happen in free agency. If Antawn is not back, then there’s no point in me coming back because he’s part of my success, too. When you’re doing pick and roll with a player like him, they can’t double you, they can’t trap you because you have a pick and pop guy who can shoot the three at your four position. My success is because of him too. If he doesn’t come back, I’m not coming back.

I know everybody is focusing on whether I’m coming back, but I’m focusing on what he’s doing. If he doesn’t come back, then I’m not coming back.

This shouldn’t really come as a shock to anyone, considering that he already said he’d take a pay cut to keep Antawn.  Not to mention this quote from his blog back in December:

So I had this interview with John Mitchell. I’m sure his original story wasn’t going to go that way. Knowing John, I know his original story started off, “Is that the last time we’ll see Gilbert Arenas on the basketball court – the 30 and 11 — as a Wizard?” (Just in case I don’t come back this year.) I know that’s what his angle was.

But I’ve been saying for the longest, I want my jersey retired here, but if something happens this summer where we somehow rebuild because we lose players …

We lost Etan due to his heart right now … We don’t know if he’s going to come back. Antawn’s a free agent … We don’t know if he’s going to come back. Right there, that’s two key pieces to your success. You lose both of those players and you don’t bring anybody else in on that level or better than them, and we have a problem.

It should be interesting to see what happens here, because while Antawn has publically stated that he’d like to stay in Washington, another contender could throw him a deal that would sweep him off of his feet.  As for the rest of his blog, he starts off by putting an end to the rumors that this was his last blog…kind of:

I know the rumor is that this is my last blog.

I can say …

No. It isn’t.

I’ll give you all a hesitant no, this is not my last blog.

Make of that what you will.  He then goes on to talk about the playoff series versus Cleveland and the disappointment in not being able to help as much as he wanted:

I’m very disappointed that I wasn’t healthy enough to help them through the First Round. It was a very disappointing year for me personally, but as far as team success, they should walk around with their heads held high. When I got hurt, the critics said they weren’t going to be able to make the playoffs and I think they proved everybody wrong.

I know they’re disappointed at losing in the First Round to Cleveland, but they had a great player over there in LeBron, and they did a great job.

He also had some good words for the Wizards’ organization for this year’s playoffs:

Luke Walton paged me after Game 6 and said, “Why don’t you take off that Easter outfit.” I didn’t have white! So I had to wear some clothes that I usually wear on my Miami trips. The only thing I had that was close to white was beige. So I got clowned for wearing it, and I got fined $10,000 for it because I didn’t have a jacket on. But that’s OK. I had to go with the theme. I liked what the city did with the White Out. This by far was the best playoff performance that the organization has put together out of all the years that I’ve been here.

Next, Gilbert talked about the significance of the tattoo on his knee:

Originally I had one tattoo on my knee. When I was getting ready to make my comeback, I put one cross on my knee cap. I was like, “God is going to be with me for this journey.” So, then I remembered, when Jesus sacrificed himself he was with two thieves on either side of him on the cross. So then I had to get three crosses to represent Jesus and the two thieves and sacrifice, because I was going to sacrifice my knee for the team. Since it was going to be a sacrifice, I figured, let me just double up on the crosses. So I had the one original, plus the two sets of three, so that gives me lucky number seven. And I know there’s something symbolic with seven. So I get blessed on the knee cap with one cross, get blessed on the left side with three crosses and I get blessed on the right side with three more crosses … If that makes any sense.

Um, yeah.  I think.

Once Gilbert finished that explanation, he went on to talk about his plans form the summer and getting back to 100%:

I just have to monitor my body now. Last summer I took it seriously, but I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have. I worried more about my skill ability than really working on my leg as a whole. This summer I’m focusing my No. 1 priority on my knee and getting it back to 100 percent. Day in and day out, I’m going to strengthen up my knee.

Right now my pool is being built. They said it was going to be done May 2. Today is May 7, and it’s drier than a desert out there.

I just got to concentrate on this knee. For Washington, or whatever city I go to, I don’t want to come in being a half a player. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get this knee right so I can be the full force I was last year.

After giving some thoughts on the Conference semi-finals, Gilbert goes on to talk about Grand Theft Auto:

I was just playing Grand Theft Auto before I started this blog. I love it. I can say this with full confidence: I was one of the original, original players that played GTA. I was in high school and I had this Asian friend who used to burn games from China. He put a chip in my Playstation 1 so I could play burned games and that was one of the games that I had.

The best part about that game which I wished they would do again, and they have it done it since, was in that game you could upload your own music CD in there so that whenever you jumped into a car it would play your music. I guess it automatically loaded to GTA or something. So I used to always put in Snoop, so whenever I was causing destruction in the car, I was listening to Snoop.

You aren’t a real Grand Theft Auto player if you don’t know about that one. I thought they were going to do that again on the new one, but they didn’t. I like how you can play with your friends and do missions and stuff though.

Finally, Gilbert shows some love for his dad:

My dad is getting oldddddd! I don’t know if I’m the only person to look at his parents and just think, “Man, you’re getting old!” He came for the playoffs and he has the gray and black mustache, and a little hint of a beard, you know he cut it but you can still see gray coming out of his face. He had the little afro that wasn’t combed. He had the same old leather hat on and it was hot out, and I’ve told him about wearing a leather hat when it’s hot before.

I looked at him like, “Mannn, you’re getting old!”

That’s all I could say. I didn’t have nothing else to say to him. I was like, “Man, you’re letting yourself go. You look like Jordan on the cover of ESPN the Magazine.”

Well, maybe not love, but you get the idea.

You can check it out here.

It’s pretty deep stuff that I can’t really get into because I’ve got to run in a few, but as always it’s worth the read.

DC Sports Bog has gathered up a bunch of quote from Gilbert on DeShawn Stevenson, his suit collection, and what it’s like sitting on the bench, among other things.

Here’s my favorite dialouge from the piece:

On whether he enjoyed watching DeShawn unleash his personality: “Yes. Especially for somebody, we’ve been knowing each other since we were in high school, to finally get the identity where people know him as his own self. That’s what I told him when he first started doing this [Can’t feel my face hand wave], and then his agent told him ‘Don’t do that, that’s a gang sign.’ I’m like, ‘five fingers across the face? What the hell kind of gang sign is that?’ And I was like, ‘You’ve found something that people are actually taken [with], you’ve got fans doing this, you’ve got little kids. Antawn’s daughter used to do it. She used to come, ‘daddy look.’ [Waving hand.] So I was like, that’s your snitch now, you’ve got to do it.”

Snitch? “Stitch.”

Niche? “Stick.”

Schtick? “Yeah.”

As you can tell, Gilbert has a lot of snitches in his personality.

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.

The vow of silence is over! Kind of. Gilbert explains in his latest blog:

When people are asking me, “How does it feel to be back?” I don’t consider myself back. It’s jinxy. That’s why I don’t talk to the media right now. They’re going to ask the same questions, “How does the knee feel? … How does it feel coming off the bench? … Are you opting out?”

You know what, there’s only so many times you can answer those same questions. I mean, can’t they just use the same quotes I said last week? There’s only so many times you can answer the same questions so I just said, “Forget it.”

I retired from talking to the media for this year. I’m going to wait until next season.

After this, I’m not blogging for a little bit either. Right now, it’s not all about me. It’s about keeping focus on the team. We’re in the middle of a playoff positioning fight. I’m trying to do anything I can to help us achieve our team goals. If that means coming off the bench, then that means coming off the bench.

After ripping on Tom Knott and Latrell Sprewell for a little bit, he rips on the people that mocked his prediction that he would beat Boston:

I remember when I made the prediction at the beginning of the year that we would beat Boston, everybody laughed at me after we lost. They had their little shorts giggles. I’m glad you guys giggled, because I’m going to be giggling the whole summer now.

I think we’re the only team in the league to beat them three times this season. So, giggle giggle giggle back. You all were so quick to kill me, but five months later I got the last laugh.

Three out of four.

HA!

He also talks a little about the birthday parties that teammates Caron Butler and DeShawn Stevenson threw and about Jerryd Bayless opting for the NBA Draft. Sadly, it looks like it will be his last blog for a little while (he probably won’t blog again until the Wiz are knocked out of the playoffs), but I have to say I’m kind of liking this new, angrier Gil that we’ve seen since his comeback.

On an unrelated note, check out the DC Sports Bog. Dan Steinberg managed to get some quotes from Todd Gallagher’s new book Andy Roddick Beat Me With A Frying Pan which features of lot of Gilbertisms.