Arenas embraces game even more after knee surgery

Gilbert Arenas plans to opt out of his contract after the season, but he says he's like to re-sign with the Wizards. Bill Frakes/SI

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NEW YORK -- Sitting in the second-floor VIP room of the NBA Store in midtown Manhattan, Gilbert Arenas contemplates the question: Have you ever considered your basketball mortality?

Not in four standout years at Ulysses S. Grant High School in Van Nuys, Calif., he says. Not in two years at Arizona, where he collected All-Pac 10 honors and was named the 2001 Midwest Region's Most Outstanding Player as a sophomore. Not in six years in the NBA, where Arenas blossomed from a second-round pick itching for his shot to a career 22.9 point-per-game scorer worthy of national team consideration.

Not until April 4, 2007, that is.

On that day, the 25-year-old Arenas finally got a glimpse of what life could be like without basketball. In the first quarter of the Wizards' game against Charlotte, Bobcats forward Gerald Wallace went in for a layup and came down hard on Arenas' left knee. Arenas sustained a torn meniscus, and for the first time in his life, he was left to wonder what to do without the game he loved.

"When I was sitting on the training table, I was thinking, 'This pain is real bad,'" said Arenas, who passed through New York last week to promote NBA Live '08, which features his likeness on the cover. "I was scared. I didn't know how serious it was."

Serious enough that Arenas would have to undergo season-ending surgery, which, coupled with the loss of All-Star forward Caron Butler to a broken hand April 1, sent the Wizards into a late-season tailspin that mercifully ended with a first-round sweep by Cleveland. With his spirits low, Arenas did not travel with the team the last two weeks of the regular season and was with Washington for just one of its first two playoff games in Cleveland.

"I had a lot of negative energy," Arenas said. "I wasn't in the right frame of mind to be around the players. I would sit at home and think about the Kobe situation and what happened with Michael Vick. I really started to cherish the sport more because once it's gone, it's really gone."

The end of the line for the Wizards, however, was just the beginning for Arenas, whose approach to rehab this summer was as maniacal as the way he prepares for a basketball season. Once he was allowed to resume physical activity in June, Arenas rehabbed his knee four hours per day, running the steps at the Verizon Center in Washington and strapping 10- and 15-pound weights to his left ankle and dangling his leg off a table to regain full extension. The rehabilitation had an added benefit: Arenas dropped 16 pounds since the end of last season and enters training camp this week at a svelte 209 pounds.

"I have never seen someone rehab so hard in my life," Wizards general manager Ernie Grunfeld said.

Still, there may be traces of doubt lingering in Arenas' mind. There are whispers that the Wizards may have downplayed the injury, that Arenas may have done more damage to the knee than reported. Though not directly related, the severity of the injury may go a long way toward explaining why Arenas said he will opt out of the final year of his contract (worth $12.8 million) after the season and seek the long-term security of a new deal. That doesn't mean Arenas has any intention of pursuing employment elsewhere.

"Washington is option 1, 2 and 3," said Arenas, who first discussed opting out with Grunfeld shortly after the season ended. "It would take something crazy to happen for me not to stay. I'm the president of DC -- you know, without the White House."

Said Grunfeld: "We are absolutely committed to re-signing Gilbert."

Grunfeld would probably feel the same way even if the man he hopes to re-sign wasn't named Gilbert Arenas. In an interview with Sports Illustrated last season, Arenas expressed a desire to change his name, claiming there is a correlation between a player's rise to superstar status and the way his name flows out of a broadcaster's mouth.

"A name like mine, I just look at my dad and say, 'What, you didn't think I was going to be a star?'" Arenas said.

Well, eight months later, Arenas has figured what he wants to go by.

"Gilbert McLovin," Arenas said. "That name will take me to another level."