Gilbert Arenas Will Say (Almost) Anything

Photograph: Getty Images; Collage: Gabe Conte

Gilbert Arenas has a habit of laughing in conversation. Sometimes, it’s simply because he’s amused by his own words. At other moments, it feels like the ever-opinionated Arenas chuckles because he knows he’s about to cause a stir. The 12-year NBA veteran is 42 now, but he’s been capturing basketball fans’ attention—for a variety of different reasons—for some 20-odd years.

A penchant for deep threes, athletic finishes, and late-game heroics brought the high-scoring guard accolades including three All-Star Game appearances, a signature Adidas sneaker, and the cover of NBA Live 08. A 2009 incident involving guns in the Washington Wizards locker room, and the resulting suspension, brought him infamy. In the ensuing years, Arenas’s self-awareness—particularly his understanding that some people enjoy him while others find him insufferable—has aided his evolution into a media personality.

After bouncing between podcasts, digital talk shows, and occasional appearances on ESPN, Arenas unveiled Gil’s Arena in 2023. The Underdog Fantasy show, which airs live from his basement, is co-hosted by Arenas and Josiah Johnson with a supporting cast of current and former pros including Kenyon Martin, Brandon Jennnings, Rashad McCants, and Lexie Brown. With episodes exceeding two hours, Gil’s Arena represents his ideal product: a grandiose blend of in-depth basketball discussion and constant provocation.

There are numerous former (and current) NBA players with podcasts at the moment, but Arenas might be the only one who started blogging for the league during the prime of his career. And his understanding of the internet, along with his brazen attempts to mix hyperbole and nuance, have helped him stand out in a congested sports media landscape.

Keeping his edge means keeping up with what’s next, too. “I’m always consuming information, so I’m always going to be ahead,” he says. “I’m watching kids stuff, I’m watching Mr. Beast, I’m watching all realms to see if anybody moves faster before anyone else notices.”

During a lengthy conversation in March, Arenas offered his thoughts on the sports media industrial complex, complaints about the modern NBA, and more.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

GQ: A lot of people know you from having different shows here and there, plus going viral for trolling Nick Young. But I remember when you did the player’s diary blog on NBA.com. What did that experience teach you about engagement and internet culture?

Gilbert Arenas: As with anything, you don’t know where it’s going to take you initially. So at first, it was speaking on what I did throughout the week. Then I realized what type of tool it was: an in-depth perception from the player’s point of view. When we’re doing interviews with the media, it’s more controlled. We’re really watching what we’re saying and it’s going to be the same cliched things across the board. Everyone gravitated to me going on NBA.com and really just speaking on what I did throughout the week. So I understood, really early, the power of the pen and how to manipulate words. We call it trolling now, but I understood shock value.

That informs your word choice, especially when promoting yourself. For example, insisting that you were better than Stephen Curry—when you were both 25. You know exactly how that’s going to land.

[Laughs] It’s human nature. When we’re arguing back and forth, we only hear key words that we don’t like. If I say, “Yeah, LeBron is better than Jordan,” anything I say after that is meaningless. I understood that. So if I say, “I’m better than Steph,” I know they’re going to stop right there—before, “by the age of 25.” Once people start hearing, “I’m better than Steph,” they’ll make it go viral. And when the people who are listening to the whole thing try to come back and prove me wrong, they go, “Ah, we didn’t see he added…that part.”

Your willingness to say almost anything, intentionally, serves you well in this current era of loud voices getting the most attention. Once you decided to pursue media, who, if anyone, did you study to get better?

The Charles Barkleys and the Shaqs. You study what makes Stephen A. Smith good. You watch what made Skip Bayless good. And then you factor in how far they’re pushing the lines. Then, when Shannon [Sharpe] came around, he has his cognac and cigar—plus, some of the stuff he says, I’m like, “You’re allowed to….say that?!’”

Besides podcasts, I remember when I did The Jump with Rachel Nichols, where I was with Richard [Jefferson, his former teammate at Arizona]. I went to the producers and asked if I could get Disney’s list of words you can’t say, then went through the whole list to try and figure out if I could call him a dick, but mean Richard, on national television. It became “douchebag,” which I said twice before they told me I couldn’t say that. I was like, “Yes I can, I looked it up and that word is perfectly fine.” So as much as people think I’m wild, I do research. I’ll research everything and go right to the line.

Who do you see as your competition in the sports media space right now?

I was independent when Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson signed with Showtime, and when the Knuckleheads [Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson] signed with the Players’ Tribune. So I was battling with them for a while, then during Covid, I jumped into interviewing upcoming stars and started buzzing throughout the youth basketball community. Then obviously, when you have a sponsor, they want to go with familiar names, so it was back to the NBA, where I was basically getting the C-list compared to what Matt Barnes and them were doing.

I always keep a notebook so I can write down thoughts. I remember putting my son through a drill, then I looked in the back of the notebook and saw this vision I had: do a podcast in the middle of the court, arena-style. I pitched the idea of Gil’s Arena and did an NBA Finals party in 2022. T-Mac came, Kenyon of course, Jared Jeffries, Matt Barnes—and while we’re sitting there looking at the space, I realized I could do it live like they do on TNT. I searched around and saw that there wasn’t a live basketball show like that. I saw what Pat McAfee was doing, watched him for at least a month, then said, This is what I want to do: live basketball.

Everyone’s so scared of themselves that they don’t want to go live, so I created my live show and there is no competition. Now, my only competition is myself because I’m with Shannon Sharpe each Wednesday on Nightcap, which is live. So of three main live shows, I’m on two of them.

Do you think this moment of athlete-led podcasts, shows, and documentaries is a direct response to how athletes were covered and maybe misunderstood in the past?

Yeah, it’s not that we’re misunderstood. It’s that we're more than just, “You guys are on a three-game slide—how do you feel after this game?” Because [if] “Both teams played hard” or “It was a great team win” is all you’re getting from me, when you decide to tell a story, you’re creating the narrative of what you see in the locker room. What persona do you think I’m giving you when you keep asking about another tough loss? You have no idea who I am.

So what ends up happening is, for the most part, Stephen A. and all these other guys are right in the sense of, “He’s a ball hog,” but I don’t want you to say that shit. Because now my teammates are looking at me like, “Are you gonna start passing the ball?”—and the answer’s no, but I have to pretend. The media was creating more rifts in the locker room than they should have. We’re supposed to be talking about the sport and sometimes it gets personal. So now that players can tell their own stories, it’s kind of hard for the media to lay down certain narratives because they won’t stick. Now the real voice gets to put it out there and keep coming.

When someone like Stephen A. has to keep talking about different things, Draymond Green can go on his podcast at any time and correct what’s said.

I feel like the media can be fair to players and still hold them accountable. Athletes’ distrust or outright dismissal of the media is earned in many cases, but can the landscape be healthy if it’s dominated by athletes talking to each other? Because just like the media can misrepresent athletes’ words, athletes can say whatever they want on their podcasts with no pushback.

Here’s what’s happening: players do feel comfortable with each other. But those conversations are not the conversations the media would get anyway, right? On the player podcasts, we’re going back, talking about an old coach, talking about the locker room, talking about partying. It’s more of that atmosphere, so the fanbase gets a more in-depth look at players.

I think it became too easy to be a media personality. “Who’s better, Luka or this?” There’s no information; anybody can say that. And that became the problem someone like me benefits from. I blogged with Dave McMenamin, so I understand his thought process. I know the players’ perspective, so I just blend both worlds and that kind of separates me. So right now, when we’re talking about how nobody plays defense, what we can do to correct it, and how European players have taken over, I’ll throw it out there: get rid of all the Euros. Everyone says, “What?! You can’t do that.” And I say, if you want better defense, get rid of the Euros, because you guys dumbed down the game to make it international.

You wanted an international game, so you brought in the seven seconds or less offense via Mike D’Antoni and [Jerry] Colangelo [in Phoenix]—do not foul, do not play any defense, get up and down. You saw that the fans loved it, so you implemented new rules. With Colangelo, I don’t even know how that was legal: he’s the general manager in Phoenix and he’s implementing rules so his team can play well. Then, you see back-to-back MVPs for Steve Nash. [Note: In 2001, Colangelo, then the Suns’ chairman and CEO, headed a committee which oversaw rule changes aiming to create a more fast-paced game.]

So when I throw it out there—"Well, you guys created this”—what I’m basically saying is, “So are you gonna get rid of all the Euros who expanded the game?” And the answer is “no,” so just shut up. Because outside of Wemby, who’s a center; Giannis, who’s a power forward; and Rudy Gobert, who’s a center, none of those European players can play any defense. They have no athleticism, there are no fast-twitch muscles going on over there.

In terms of the complaints about defense, load management, and the regular season feeling increasingly irrelevant, do you think the consumers—and, in some instances, the media—are upset about something they’ve helped create?

It’s not that they helped create it, it’s that businessmen got smarter. No matter how much they hated Donald Sterling, that’s who everyone idolized—and when I say idolized, think about what he was doing. He never kept a draft pick: four years, get on. He was getting these first-rounders and by the time their second contract was coming, he’d let them go. He maximized youth and never signed anybody big. His salary cap was so low, so from a business standpoint, he’s the gold standard: spend little money, maximize profit. When you’re talking about the Indianas, they’re thinking the same thing [laughs].

You had the analytics guys come in and it destroyed the game, but increased the business. So let’s say you just drafted Luka: the analytics told the team he was going to be exactly what he is. They look at his body and how he plays, so they decide that if they keep him under 69 games a year, they might be able to maximize him for 17 years instead of having him for 12. So now they can keep the Luka brand for five more years if they manage his usage on the front end.

Think about LeBron. If he was still playing 80 to 82 games a year, he would’ve been playing the way he’s playing now five years ago due to wear and tear. In places like Miami, he would’ve been saying, “Man, they’re wearing my legs down. They’re taking years off my career.” Those old school guys like Stan Van Gundy take years off your career because you’re practicing for three hours, twice a day. It was crazy. These guys with the analytics are like, “Nah, I want the brand for longer because I can maximize the jersey sales and these seats. So we’re going to find ways to load-manage.”

Most of the media doesn’t even know that everybody wore chips in practice. In 2010, right around the time that I was getting out of the league, certain teams like New York and Washington were trying it. They didn’t have it yet when I got to Orlando, but they were doing blood testing to see what your body needs in terms of food to function at a high level. At some point, teams started using monitors to see how much energy you were using. So if I know every time you use more than 70 percent effort in practice, you underperform in the game the next day. But at 60 and below, you’re playing at an All-NBA level. So what do you think I’m doing in practice now? Making sure you never hit 70. Now I’m load-managing in practice and during games.

It became a business: “I want LeBron for 22 years, not 12 or 13.”

Do you feel like you have a unique perspective as someone who falls between today’s players and a generation of players who are critical of them?

It gives me a little advantage, because when everybody talks about defense and looks at the early-to-mid 2000s, that’s me. And then I get to say: “Their defense was trash. We just had more offense that slowed the game down.” So when you fast-forward and I’m sitting here looking at the game now, I’m looking at whether I can stop these guys and I know: nah, because I never had to guard someone who was trying to score 30 like me. If I was going to stop this guy, how would I do it? So I look at the roster, put myself in the situation, and ask: “How do I stop it? Why are they scoring so well?”

Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander] gets to go one-on-one. It’s like when I got to go one-on-one against Deron Williams with Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison on my team—and DeShawn Stevenson in the corner. You can’t help; you’re by yourself, buddy. But they’ve got better three-point shooters and their team is designed for better three-point shooters. These guys have so much space and you thrive if you’re a great one-on-one player. So with me being the reporter now, I get to really see the advantage, the rules, and the old guys complaining.

There are certain people who shouldn’t say certain things. Like me: I’m not going to say Ja Morant is this or that, or throw dirt on his name, because I was an idiot. I give him credit because was only 22 or 23. I was 28, 29 when my situation happened—I was supposed to know better [laughs]. If you look at both scenarios, I’m the idiot and he’s young. No matter what I say about you, I’m going to give you a fair analysis when it comes to the game. I might say the Greek Freak can’t do this, this, this, or this, but where would I draft him? Number one or two. Reality is still reality, goddammit [laughs]. I’m not gonna be stupid and say twelfth.

Some people talk about how players are too friendly towards each other now, but Victor Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren are being positioned as rivals. There’s a crop of young players like Shai, Tyrese Haliburton, and Anthony Edwards who look eager to take the mantle from the previous generation. How do you feel about that development and their approach?

You know what’s so funny? People say everyone is friends now, but then you hear stories about Jordan. Think about what players told the younger players about him: “Don’t look him in his eye”—remember they told Kobe that?—”Call him the Black Jesus.” They were in awe of Michael Jordan, there was a fear factor to the point that he had mind control over them. “Barkley, I know you love hanging out with me. Let’s go to the club, let’s go to the bar, let’s do this.” Because Michael Jordan is Michael Jordan, so he’s planning to keep you out, get you drunk, and you’re falling for it.

There’s no player who can keep LeBron James out [at night], and LeBron James can’t keep Kevin Durant out. That doesn’t happen anymore. Yes, we played AAU together, but we’re still fighting for the same thing when we get on the court, just like Barkley and Michael Jordan did. Back then, they all worked out alone. But if you listen to Grant Hill, who was already an All-Star by the time Kobe came around, he didn’t even know what skill development was. He just played in the summer. What I came in with is what I came in with is how they treated it back then.

I’m a personality guy, so I love seeing guys taunt each other. Like Embiid when Brooklyn lost that first playoff game, or when Embiid got put out [of the playoffs] and Ben Simmons was watching the game by the fireplace. It’s good competition in an era when they say everyone is friends, so to watch them troll each other on social media is good. It shows the fans that they’re normal. What KD is doing is no different than what every human is doing: someone says something about you, you snap back. He’s not above being a human.

Calitlin Clark announced that this was her final season at Iowa before the NCAA Tournament even started. Women’s college basketball has the biggest stars right now and they tend to be more complete players when they go pro because they’ve spent more time developing in college. Do you think there’s anything that can be done to make men’s college basketball more relevant beyond this time of year?

It’s just like anything: once you open the idea of something, it creates a wormhole. And the wormhole is that now, coaches have to stop lying to players just to fill a roster. So if I’m going for a top five kid, and I don’t want that top five kid to transfer, I have to make sure that I’m making him look good. Whatever I said to get him in the building, I now have to stand on all ten toes. If I told him he was going to get 12 to 14 shots a game, then goddammit, I have to find out how to get that done.

Because now, he’s leaving. And the kid who’s behind him ends up staying four years and I’m like—[makes a face showing his skepticism]. What do you want your program to be about? We can see that some of the “prestige” names cracked when it came to rules. Look at Mike Kryzewski at Duke. I’m not getting into the one-and-dones. I’m not doing this, I’m not doing that. Then, he gets the Team USA job and realizes, Oh, I can use this as a recruiting tool.

He cracked and accepted the one-and-dones. Both sides have to adjust, but just like anything in life, the cream of the crop is the cream of the crop. The portal just removes weakness. I’d rather it be there so we can see what character-building is.

I teach my son that NIL is just bags of money on the track. Every time you stop to pick one up, whoever you’re racing with gets closer to or further from you. Every time you stop, whether it’s for $100,000 here or $50,000 there, there’s going to be a point where you can’t carry the money and run—and that finish line is the pros.

The pros are paying Wemby $55 million. So you’ve picked up a million dollars in high school—and potentially lost $55 million, plus a potential shoe contract. That’s called poor man’s thinking. And I told him the reason I know that is because when NIL deals started, I put myself in Michael Jordan and Nike’s shoes. What would I do? I’d go to all these single mothers who don’t understand basketball but have these talented kids, and I’d entice them with money that could change their lives. If I’m Michael Jordan, I’m going to take the top 120 kids and say, “Here, I’ll give you all lifetime deals. A million dollars a year, as long as you’re playing basketball once you make it to the pros.” That stops people like Zion from coming in and asking for $50 to $100 million because I’ve already lifetimed them. That’s how I think: how to get over, so I know how to defend against it.

If the commissioner wants to keep the kids in school and make college basketball better, tell the NBA Players Association to sign off on kids being able to leave school after their sophomore year or be 20 years old [to enter the draft] in exchange for two weeks off during All-Star Weekend when it comes time for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement. To change college basketball, you have to start with the NBA. You have to promise these veterans some shit and they’ll sign off on it, trust me. They’ve done it before, they’ll do it again.

Have you thought about what the next phase of Gil’s Arena looks like?

My next move is Netflix. When you talk about the structure of my podcast, the only competition is Pat McAfee. I have a full production studio. Even though we’re in 1080p, everything is 4K. So if everything shifts to 4K, I don’t have to worry about buying new equipment. I’m running like a network, so I can go to Netflix and pitch them like this: “For this three-hour movie, you spent $300 million and got 100 million views last year off something most people have seen one or two times. Well, I have a show that we do live every single day for three hours. My total numbers are 200 million for the year. You spent $300 million on that, but I’ll double your views for $300 million.” We just have to find a format that fits the Netflix style. If Netflix said, “We want to do three shows a week with you guys,” I’m already set structurally. I just have to figure out what language we can’t use.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but someone will say something and I’ll be on the phone talking to the producers like, “Scrub that out and scrub that out.” Like when we say “nigga”: on YouTube, if it sounds like “nigger,” you’re flagged. If someone says something and I’m like, “Hmmm, I don’t know,” scrub it out. Kenyon said something the other day and I was like, “Scrub it out.” [laughs] McCants pushed out a rival company and I was like, “Scrub it out.” So I’m editing in real-time. If you go to the Gil’s Shootout promotion, you’ll see that I had them do solo cams where we reacted to a shooter, reality TV-style. I needed to see how it looked from a production standpoint because for season three, I want to show us reacting to each other’s takes after the fact.

Originally Appeared on GQ