Guard lied to Saunders in saying he was hurt
The Washington Wizards hoped Gilbert Arenas would stir up as little trouble as possible after his locker room gun incident in December. The guard didn’t even make it through the preseason.
Arenas already had something new to apologize for Wednesday after he admitted he faked an injury the night before in order to allow teammate Nick Young to replace him in the starting lineup for the Wizards’ first preseason home game.
“I was trying to be a good teammate,” said Arenas, who also was fined an undisclosed amount by Wizards coach Flip Saunders. “Nick wanted to play, and since we are guard-loaded, I felt I’d take the day off, and I lied to Coach and told him my knee was sore so he could start Nick. … I screwed up again, so I just want to say, ‘Sorry.’?”
Saunders said he found out early Wednesday morning a sore knee wasn’t why Arenas missed the game. Saunders said that was the reason Arenas indicated to him he couldn’t play Tuesday night.
Still, after Tuesday’s 107-92 win over Atlanta, which would’ve been Arenas’ first game at Verizon Center since he was suspended in January for 50 games for the gun incident, Arenas said the injury was a “sacrifice” for Young, that he was “fine” and that he would play in Washington’s next game.
On Wednesday morning, Saunders reminded Arenas and the team that he cannot judge whether a player is injured and that only he decides who plays, not the players.
“I told him, ‘I most disappointed, personally, because I believe in you,’?” Saunders said. “There has been a trust factor. I told him, ‘You have to be honest with me.’ It’s just like dealing with your kids. When your kids make mistakes, what you do is you deal with them. It doesn’t mean you love them any less.”
Young, the beneficiary of the ruse, said he didn’t realize what Arenas had done and went on to score a team-high 24 points in his first start of the year. After apologizing, Arenas joked with Young that he should pay the fine.
“Nah, because I don’t know nothing about it,” Young said, “and he got a lot more money than I do.”
Saunders said he had not suspended Arenas for Thursday’s contest against Milwaukee. But when asked whether Arenas would play, Saunders responded, “We’ll have to see how he feels.”
