Dear Gilbert,

I’m not sure how much you watch Sports Center—I mean, you’ve been pretty busy with work-related pursuits like Xbox 360, Twitter and my personal favorite, online poker at halftime of your games.  But if you were watching any ESPN a year ago, you might remember a guy named Plaxico Burress, who was just like you: a star athlete with a fondness for bringing guns to public places (and a first name with seven letters, by the way.  That can’t be a coincidence).  Anyway, one night Plaxico went to a nightclub with a loaded pistol.

Do you by any chance remember what happened to Plaxico?

As it turns out, being a star athlete does a lot of good things for you—gets you lots of money, a loyal following and plenty of opportunities to cheat on your Swedish wife (oh sorry, that’s just golfers)—but when Plax got the axe last year, you probably should have realized that there’s one thing stardom can’t do.  When you do something stupid with a gun—like, maybe, pulling it on a teammate in your own locker room—you don’t get out of jail free (unless your name happens to be O.J.), even if your nickname makes you sound like a secret agent.

Let’s take a step back to address the root of this whole fiasco: a bet you refused to pay to your buddy Javaris Crittenton.  Really, people should have seen your gambling issues from a mile away.  Of course there was the online poker thing, but there was also footage of you having a high-stakes shooting competition (thankfully with basketballs, not rifles) with DeShawn Stevenson, as well as a story a few years back about a bet you made with a fan during a game.  What was so unexpected was your refusal to pay up.  I’m pretty sure the Wizards pay you like a Tahitian prince (even though in the last few years you’ve done about as much for the team as, well, a prince in Tahiti), and you’d be easily able to cover whatever sum of money you owed Crittenton.

Of course, if it had stopped there, you’d just be “Gilbert being Gilbert.”  What might end up making you “Gilbert in an orange jumpsuit” is the fact that you brought guns into the situation.

It’s generally not considered a good business practice, in any line of work, to keep three of your guns on the premises.  In the NBA, in fact, it’s illegal.  But there you were, Gilbert, storing them in your Verizon Center locker.  You’ve explained it by saying you decided not to keep them in your house after your third child was born.  Really?  It took three children before you decided guns near your “Li’l Gilberts” probably weren’t a good idea?  But let’s forget that bit of idiocy and move on to your idiocy in the locker room.

After Crittenton said he would shoot you in your injured knee, did you really think it would improve the situation to lay out your guns next to his locker, leaving a note that told Crittenton to pick one?  I guess you didn’t really think it through, because you left that message for him, which prompted him to tell you he already had a gun, leading your little wild west duel in the locker room.

Well, less than a week after your little standoff, reports started coming out, and your stupidity kept shining through.  I know you’re your own agent, but are you your own public relations advisor too?  If so, you should probably fire yourself, because posting jokes about the situation on Twitter, shooting your mouth off to both David Stern and law enforcement and jokingly making finger-guns before a game are idiotic actions that will backfire on you really quickly.

So that’s where we are now, Gilbert.  For a while, every Wizards fan referred to you as either Hibachi, Agent Zero or God.  Now, we call you some variation of “Gilbert Arenas, national punch line” You’re already suspended for the season, and we’re just waiting  for this story to give the Wizards a valid excuse to void your contract.

Good luck getting paid after prison, by the way.  Well, I guess you can count on a pretty hefty advertising contract with the NRA.

Yours truly,

Josh Lederman