If you haven’t already, make sure you check out And A Wild Child Shall Lead Him where Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated wrote about Gilbert Arenas. In it, Arenas reveals that the real reason he faked the knee injury during the Washington Wizards preseason opener was not to give teammate Nick Young more playing time, but he was afraid of the reaction from the home crowd.

“I was really scared of getting booed. It’s a little crazy because I was here with Kwame Brown when Kwame was scared to go out there. I used to be like, Man, it’s just boos. Now here I was six years later, and I was him. I was scared to go out there.”

In SLAM Online’s definitive ranking of the NBA’s best players, they rank Gilbert Arenas at #49 based solely on projected ‘10-11 performance. Areas was ranked #34 last season.

Some of their points:

• Arenas is weird and funny and quirky and annoying and awesome and, just, strange—all at the same damn time
• The dude can flat-out score: 22.7 ppg for his career, with 29.3 and 28.4 averages in ’05-06 and ’06-07
• The former Agent Zero dropped 200-plus threes twice and has practically patented the 30-foot pull-up

Here’s hoping for a healthy season for Gilbert Arenas and the Washington Wizards!

Make sure to check out GilbertArenas.com on Halloween, Oct 31st where Gilbert’s website will be relaunched.

While the 09-10 season is just around the corner, here are some Gilbert Arenas news and links from around the world wide web:

Flip Saunders thinks Arenas can improve in new system

Gilbert says “Can’t Nobody Guard Me”

Gilbert Arenas is #34 out of 50 in Slam Online’s definitive ranking of the NBA’s best players

DC Landing Strip interviews Nick Young about some of Gilbert Arenas’ pranks, like ripping up his clothes in the locker room so he has to go home in his jersey

Check out the three part mini-series of exclusive video footage of Gilbert Arenas’ offseason training program with personal trainer Tim Grover from WashingtonWizards.com