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Ex-NBA All-Star Offers New Details on Gun Incident in Locker Room

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The infamous Wild, Wild West showdown between Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton remains one of the most bizarre and scariest locker room stories of all time.

Caron Butler, a former Wizards teammate of the two, gave his firsthand account of the incident in his book “Tuff Juice,” but now one of the principal actors is offering up new details on the showdown.

Gilbert Arenas spoke with The Action Network about the whole ordeal and how it all started.

Like many teams, the Wizards gambled during their plane trips, but one game of bourré caused guns to be drawn in the locker room.

JaVale McGee had won a game of bourré involving Crittenton, but Crittenton didn’t want to pay up. That prompted Arenas, who was a team captain, to step in and get McGee what he was owed.

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“The plane lands,” Arenas said, “and now Javaris says to JaVale, ‘So you just gonna let me lose my money like that? You ain’t even gonna be a real n—- and give me a chance to get my money back? Aw hell naw, this is the type of s— that gets you f—ed up in these streets.’

“I was like, ‘Javaris, I will burn your car, while you’re in it. Then we’ll find an extinguisher to help ya a– out,’ and he says, ‘Well, I’ll just shoot you then.’ I said, ‘Man, I’ll bring you the guns to shoot me!'”

While most assumed that Arenas was just playing around about bringing guns, he wasn’t. He brought four unloaded guns to the Wizards locker room days later.

“It was about me calling his bluff,” Arenas said. “You say you’re going to shoot me? Fine, I’ll bring you the guns to do it.”

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Arenas laid out the guns on a table and told Crittenton to pick one.

“Oh no, you don’t need to shoot me with one of those,” Crittenton said. “I’ve got one right here.”

He then pulled out a loaded gun, cocked it and pointed it at Arenas.

Butler was able to talk some sense into Crittenton and he put the gun away, but the careers of Crittenton and Arenas would be changed forever.

Both players would be suspended by David Stern for the remainder of the 2009-10 season. Arenas would play just 21 more games for the Wizards the following year before finishing out his career with short stints with Orlando and Memphis.

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He last played professionally with the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association in the 2012-13 season.

Crittenton would never play another NBA game and would run into much more serious trouble later on.

In 2011, he was charged with murder after killing a 22-year-old mother of four. The woman wasn’t Crittenton’s intended target, but she was shot in the leg and died during surgery.

Before the trial was set to begin in 2015, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter with a weapon and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

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Ross Kelly has been a sportswriter since 2009.
Ross Kelly has been a sportswriter since 2009 and previously worked for ESPN, CBS and STATS Inc. A native of Louisiana, Ross now resides in Houston.
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