Netflix’s sports documentary presentation, Untold, is back with another explosive story from the world of American basketball, with its focus on one of the most unbelievable incidents in the NBA’s history. When it was reported by the media that guns had been drawn inside an NBA locker room because of some supposed gambling feud between teammates, the matter was bound to be taken seriously, and severe punishment was expected to be meted out to the players. But Untold: Shooting Guards takes a closer look into the matter, and more importantly, at how the incident actually acted as a sort of crossroads for Javaris Crittenton and Gilbert Arenas, the two Wizards players involved in the fiasco.
What were Arenas’ and Crittenton’s individual journeys like?
While the main focus in Untold: Shooting Guards is on the unprecedented incident that took place on the 24th of December, 2009, the documentary film traces the beginning of the careers of the two NBA players involved in the matter, presented in their own words during interviews. Born and raised in Tampa, Florida, Gilbert Arenas moved to Los Angeles at a young age with his father, Gilbert Sr., who had aspirations of working in Hollywood. As his wife had left the family, and Gilbert Sr. had to raise his young son all by himself, he wanted to pursue a career in Hollywood, because he felt it would be high-paying, but soon he had to start working as a bodyguard to film stars and high-profile personalities. Young Gilbert enjoyed his time growing up in LA, as he calls his childhood much safer than what many youngsters in America get to experience, and he had developed a keen interest in playing basketball from this very time, although he never dared to dream of becoming an NBA player.
Gilbert was a regular member of the basketball team at Ulysses S. Grant High School, and Howard Levine, the high school coach at the time, still remembers how he was the first person to tell young Gilbert that he could make it big in the sport. After completing high school, he attended college at the University of Arizona, where he led the basketball team in scoring and developed into a promising guard with great potential. In his sophomore year, Gilbert played an instrumental part in taking the University of Arizona team to the national championship game, and although they lost the match, his life was about to change from here on. Soon after the championship game, Gilbert announced that he would be entering the NBA draft, and he expected to be drafted by some team early, or at least in the middle of the first round.
It was a bit of a shock for him when a teammate from his college days, Richard Jefferson, was drafted before him in the first round, despite having been considered a mediocre player. Gilbert still believes that the reason for his late drafting was that he had crossed the association authorities with some of his comments before the draft, suggesting that teams had become concerned about his disciplinary issues, despite his skills on the court. He admits that he had always been a jokester and the class clown from his childhood days, and even after growing up, he found it easier to make fun of intense situations. Therefore, when a reporter had asked him before the draft what he wanted to make of his career, Gilbert had replied that he wanted to establish himself as a ‘pimp’ of the game. Although this was his way of dealing with the pressure and the intensity of the situation, the comments were highly immature, and teams were reportedly not ready to bring him into their squad.
Gilbert was finally selected in the middle of the second round of the draft by the Golden State Warriors, who were one of the weakest teams at the time, in 2001. He reveals that this selection was quite demotivating to him, as he had hoped that one of the better teams would draft him, and the young man did not hide his frustrations very well, since they showed in his performances. Gilbert could not make any significant impact with the Warriors in the first two years of his career, and he joined the Washington Wizards in 2003. It was at Washington that Gilbert showed his true potential, and he quickly became a centerpiece in the team. Gilbert Arenas would go on to spend 7 years with the Wizards, and he was considered the leader of the team during the controversy in 2009.
Javaris Crittenton was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, in a neighborhood that he describes as having had some level of drug and crime problems, although he recalls his childhood very fondly, which he spent with his mother, grandmother, and aunts. Javaris was an obedient kid in school who always scored good grades and focused on playing basketball, a sport that he loved. He soon developed into a promising talent at the Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy, and his contributions as the leading guard helped the high school team win the state championship. Terry, his mother, who’d single-handedly raised the boy, admits that she was scared of him leaving home at a considerably young age to attend college, but Javaris always had different plans.
Despite getting attention from other colleges in the country after he was selected in the All-American game, Javaris decided to attend Georgia Tech, as he wanted to represent his state and even dreamed of playing for the Atlanta Hawks someday. After a good show of his skills during his college years, Javaris entered the NBA draft in 2007, and hoped that the Hawks would pick him as the local favorite, but this was not to be. Nonetheless, Javaris was selected by the Los Angeles Lakers as the 19th pick in the first round, and he was naturally ecstatic about this dream start to his career. But reality did not live up to his dreams, as the Lakers made it very obvious that they did not consider Javaris good enough for the team at the time, or even in the future, which was demotivating for the young player.
During his single year in Los Angeles, Javaris hardly appeared on the Lakers team, and he instead got involved in some other dangerous matters. During this time, he got close to the Crips gang, and also became a member of the violent organization, seemingly without fully realizing what he was signing up for. He remained frustrated at the way his basketball career was going, and was rather relieved when he was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies in 2008. This move did not have any impact on his career either, and he was soon traded once again, this time to the Washington Wizards, where he joined Gilbert Arenas as a point/shooting guard.
Why did the teammates draw guns in the locker room?
When Javaris Crittenton joined the Washington Wizards, the dressing room was almost totally under the control of Gilbert Arenas, who was still a prankster who would often pull elaborate jokes on his teammates. While he did not speak up against it at the time, Javaris admits that he found most of Gilbert’s ‘harmless fun’ absolutely irksome and almost offensive even, since he had never experienced such casualness and blatant unprofessionalism. To him, being in the NBA as a professional basketball player was a very serious matter, and his somber attitude demanded respect from everyone around. While Gilbert was also terribly serious about his game and about being in the league, he had a very different approach to life, and he admits that irritating and poking fun at an already angry teammate was something that he enjoyed doing quite often.
Although the news media reported that the drawing of guns happened because of some gambling dispute between the two players, the real matter is revealed by the players in Untold: Shooting Guards. On a flight from Washington to Phoenix on the 19th of December, 2009, Javaris was spending time gambling on the plane, which is quite a common custom among players, along with teammates Javale McGee and Earl Boykins, while Gilbert was apparently asleep. At the beginning of the game of cards, McGee had borrowed some money from Boykins, which he then refused to pay back before the flight landed, despite having won three straight rounds against his teammates. This angered Javaris, who was of the opinion that McGee should pay back his debts at the earliest, and he started arguing with his teammate, which quickly escalated and attracted all the players’ attention.
Gilbert Arenas, the unstated team captain, found Javaris’ behavior questionable, since he was about the same age as Javale McGee and therefore had no seniority over the teammate he was trying to school. Thus, Gilbert got involved in the fight, and soon it became about him and Javaris, with the latter charging at him and both of them shouting at each other. Gilbert states that he threatened to set Javaris’ car on fire the next time he would drive to the practice arena, simply to irk him even more, and his plan worked. The hot-headed Javaris claimed that he was not as easy a target for bullying as the rest of the squad, and threatened that he would shoot Gilbert in his knees and end his career once and for all. Surely taken aback by this threat, Gilbert Arenas once again joked by stating that he will himself bring the gun to the locker room and hand it over to Javaris so that he could shoot him.
The whole matter basically highlighted the differences between the two players, only on a large and serious scale, with Gilbert always being the jokester that he liked being and Javaris being serious and somber about things. The latter took his captain’s offer to bring guns to the locker room as a serious threat, and so on the 21st of December, Javaris Crittenton brought a loaded gun of his own. Incidentally, Gilbert had not given up on his joke yet, and he had brought two handguns into the locker room at the Verizon Center in Washington, and had even placed them on Javaris’ seat. This soon escalated into an uncomfortably intense situation for the other players when Gilbert and Javaris drew their guns at one another inside the locker, and someone among the players then spoke about the incident to the press shortly after.
How did Crittenton’s life go downhill after the incident?
Before the Wizards’ front office could tactfully deal with the situation, Peter Vescey, an experienced NBA reporter, got a whiff of the incident and wrote about it in the press. The NBA administration got involved very quickly, and the two players were suspended for a whopping 50 games, meaning that they would not appear for most of the season. Although the authorities only stated that the players were being punished for their immature actions, Gilbert Arenas claims in “Shooting Guards” that there were a few extra nuances to this punishment, and he holds himself much more culpable than Javaris.
At the time, Gilbert had a collection of more than 400 guns at his house and was always buying more of them, which was a criminal offense in the state of Washington. Moreover, he had been buying the guns in Arizona, where the purchase of weapons was legal, and was bringing them into Washington, meaning that he was essentially committing the crime of smuggling guns into the state. Added to this was the severe lack of seriousness that he showed following the incident, as Gilbert still felt the need to suppress his more difficult thoughts with humor and foolery even at this stage. During the warm-up before a game, he pretended to shoot at his teammates jokingly, and some of the latter even reciprocated by acting to die. This very public action was seen by the NBA authorities as well, and so they came up with the strictest of punishments for the players, which ultimately hurt Javaris much more than Gilbert.
Since Javaris had not been able to prove his worth to the team yet, the Wizards released him once the suspension period was over, and he briefly joined the Charlotte Bobcats before being cut once again. Within a matter of months, Javaris had to leave the NBA and take his basketball skills to China, where he joined the Zhejiang Guangsha Lions, but found the new country and culture extremely difficult to adapt to. Deciding to take some time off the game to prepare for a comeback to the NBA, Javaris returned to the USA and started training. However, he was the victim of a series of armed robberies during this time, in his own neighborhood, but he refused to name any of the perpetrators to the police because he knew them personally and wanted to deal with the matter himself.
The men who had stolen Javaris’ jewelry and money had once grown up with him in the same neighborhood, and so he planned on getting back the valuables by himself. He hired a black SUV and drove around the neighborhood looking to attack the man who had robbed him, Demontinez Stephens, and shot up his house in order to intimidate him. Then, just five days later, Javaris shot at Demontinez on the street, but missed his shot and instead hit an innocent bystander, a young woman named Julian Jones. A mother of four young children, Jones passed away from the gunshot wound, and Javaris was arrested by the police, meaning that his professional basketball career was now truly over.
How did Crittenton manage to get out of prison early?
The police investigation and the resulting court trial found Javaris Crittenton guilty of voluntary manslaughter with a gun and aggravated assault with a firearm. That his actions had not just taken the life of Julian Jones but had also terribly affected the lives of her four young children made Javaris extremely remorseful, and he even pled guilty to the charges. He was initially sentenced to 23 years in prison but was miraculously released in 2023, after just about 10 years behind bars. The release was because of a deal that his attorney had officially made with the district attorney at the time, who agreed to let the man free on the conditions that he would participate in community service, live under house arrest, and so on.
As Javaris is now out of prison, and is living almost as a free man, the APD detective who first arrested him, Vince Velazquez, believes that his release was an act of injustice for Jones and her family. The district attorney who granted this release, Paul Howard, is actually the uncle of NBA star Dwight Howard, who has incidentally been a very close friend of Javaris ever since high school. Therefore, Velazquez suspects that the DA might have actually pulled a personal favor to get Javaris released, especially since the Jones family was never consulted about this decision to let him out of prison, which is against the general convention in these cases.
Where are Javaris Crittenton and Gilbert Arenas now?
Untold: Shooting Guards ends by showing Javaris Crittenton and Gilbert Arenas at present, when both of them have mostly moved on from the major controversy of their lives. Javaris has been closely working with the Next Level Boys Academy, which works on empowering young boys with troubled lives and intends to guide them on the right path of the law. He has accepted his mistakes in life and wants to redeem himself by stopping other young men from being as hot-headed and hasty as him. Gilbert Arenas had managed to continue playing in the NBA following the controversy and has even had some success in sports media after his retirement. At present, he is actively involved in training his son, Alijah, and daughter, Izela, both of whom want to pursue basketball professionally. Following the tragic aftermath of the controversy, which acted like a crossroads for the two players, Gilbert sincerely apologized to Javaris, and the two have become close friends since then, regularly checking in on one another.
