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!

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

Luckily, fans don’t have to worry about that annoyance this year because the people’s champ, the spokesman of reason and crazy, Gilbert Arenas, is back and he’s not going to put up with the fluff and idol worship of LeBron and Kobe.

How Gilbert Arenas will rescue the NBA from being boring

The DC Sports Bog has a nice writeup of Gilbert being called “Uncoachable”.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post writes that Arenas says it’s time to get Serious.

The only problem is, Gilbert Arenas can’t be Serious.

- Kyle Weidie explains why we should change Hibachi’s nickname to Hikikomori over at NBC Washington.

- Wizznutzz has a theory on why we haven’t seen a lot of Gilbert lately:

Gilbert’s injury is especially troubling. There is much mystery surrounding his latest setback. There is even a rumor floating about that Gilbert has polio, and that the league has agreed to only film him from the waste up so that fans won’t notice the unsightly metal braces on his legs.

- Finally, over at The Good Point Austin Kent has done a great job examining how Gilbert’s career has changed since he started blogging.  He may have interviewed some guy who does a blog about Gilbert Arenas and the Wizards, but you’ll have to read it to find out.