The Washington Wizards of the late-aughts were a traveling circus, what with its rotating cast of oddballs that included Gilbert Arenas, Nick Young, and JaVale McGee.
Though the era is best remembered for the 2009 incident in which Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittendon brought loaded guns to the Wizards’ locker room, Swaggy P claims that another gun-related event occurred earlier that year.
In a recent interview with VladTV, Young recalled a time when Arenas once shot him with a BB gun during an NBA gun awareness meeting.
“My dumbass ended up bringing the BB gun to the gym just to scare him, just to play around with him,” Young shared. “But it was a gun, an NBA gun rule meeting. So, I’m in the meeting and Gil go into my locker room, take my gun, come into the guns meeting, shoot me with my gun in front of everybody while they’re talking about gun rules and stuff. … Nobody said nothing.”
Alas, the good-natured BB gun fight would be overshadowed by what happened on Dec. 21, 2009, when beef over a card game escalated to a confrontation that saw Arenas bring four unloaded guns to the Wizards locker room to threaten Crittendon.
In a 2018 interview with The Action Network, Arenas shared details of how the infamous gun incident went down. “Hey, MF, come pick one,” Gilbert told Javaris while pointing to the weapons. “I’m going to shoot your [expletive] with one of these.”
“Oh no, you don’t need to shoot me with one of those,” Javaris responded, before pulling out a loaded gun and pointing it at Arenas. “I’ve got one right here.”
Both players were suspended for the remainder of the season, and Crittendon never played in the league again.
