NBA commissioner David Stern has indefinitely suspended Gilbert Arenas. Arenas reportedly brought four unloaded guns into the Verizon Center locker room. Stern had originally planned to reserve his judgment until after a criminal report could be filed, but the police investigation got off to a slow start due to confusion over whether Gilbert Arenas was the name of the player or the location of the game. Arenas insists that people are taking the event out of context and that he was just fooling around. He told reporters that he had brought the guns as part of a joke that he was playing on someone who owes him money. "It's a lot of fun, I have him guess which guns are loaded or not, which ones have bullets in the chamber; Is the safety on??? - Let's find out. Locker rooms are great for this sort of thing because of all the tile. When a gun goes off in there the sound is unbelievable; I usually don't even have to hit the guy to get my money. But if someone does catch a bullet, clean up is really easy."
When asked about Arenas' violation of NBA rules, one sympathetic player said, "People are making way too much of this; he didn't even end up having to shoot that guy." However most of his teammates expressed deep disappointment. One such player said "He keeps saying it was a joke, but this is serious. How am I supposed to keep my head in the game if Gilbert keep pulling hilarious crap like this? I'm still laughing thinking about that guy: "Please don't shoot me, Oh please, I'll get your money" and that was four days ago. Imagine what it was like trying to play that night. Every time I looked over at Gilbert, he'd make that don't-shoot-me face. I was in tears. I mean, sure we all used to bring guns to the games in high school, but this is the NBA."
