It’s been weeks since Gilbert Arenas criticized the South Sudan men’s basketball program and fetched a response from federation president Luol Deng, but Arenas couldn’t let the reaction from one radio host go.
On a livestream on his YouTube Channel No Chill Gil this week, Arenas ranted for nearly an hour at Fox Sports Radio host Rob Parker over Parker’s criticism of Arenas for the comments on South Sudan. After Parker and his Odd Couple fill-in guest host Martin Weiss called Arenas’ comments xenophobic and racist, Arenas responded with a lengthy tirade calling the two Fox hosts “b****es” who are jealous because they don’t have as big an audience as he does.
“I’m just going to say it plain and simple. I’m content. Meaning I can generate viral while I’m on vacation. You are a reporter, which means you report on people who are going viral,” Arenas said near the conclusion of a 41-minute live reaction to a video clip put out by Fox Sports Radio. “There’s nothing you are going to say, sir, in sports that would be so f***ing intriguing that it would come across my desk.”
Arenas apologized after Deng called him out for questioning if Team USA center Joel Embiid tried to throw an exhibition game against South Sudan near the end of July, calling the African athletes Embiid’s “cousins.” Arenas also laughed that the South Sudan players are “shooting on f***ing peach baskets” while training in their native country.
Deng called Arenas’ comments “disrespectful and cruel.”
As Arenas took on Parker in his livestream, the retired NBA veteran and host of Gil’s Arena clarified that his attacks on South Sudan were all in the spirit of trash talk toward an opponent.
Arenas said he doesn’t believe he should be called xenophobic or racist for his comments, and said Parker and Weiss using those words, as well as chalking up his South Sudan trash talk to “self-hate” was “female.”
“I understand you guys just like to throw s*** out now,” Arenas said. “You two sound like some b****es. Self-hate sounds like a female word.”
Still, Arenas couldn’t help but dig in further. While he made a few valid points about how his comments were run through the many layers of aggregation and response and weren’t represented in their full depth on The Odd Couple, Arenas ultimately doubled down on his criticism toward South Sudan in the livestream.
“I’m starting to think they’re treating these motherf***ers as some special-ed kids,” he said. “The point is my team versus your team … all I care about did we win or not?”
As with most lengthy livestreams, Arenas covered a ton of ground in his comments. But Arenas’ main issue seemingly is that Parker took him too seriously and accused him of being a bigot.
However, Parker primarily focused on Arenas’ lack of discipline. After playing Arenas’ comments on The Odd Couple, Parker took Arenas to task for not doing enough research and having too many yes-men around to have a real conversation, which Parker believes happens too often on all athletes’ podcasts.
“This is what happens when rich guys have nothing better to do, so they get a podcast and people follow them. And they got on and they think they’re so cute and funny, and they can just chastise,” Parker said. “They don’t have to answer to anybody … there’s no parent company. So they can just say whatever they want, and they do a disservice to the people that supposedly they serve.”
That led Arenas to mock Parker for not reeling in big-time views on YouTube and not owning his own content the way Arenas does through a licensing deal with Underdog Fantasy.
Arenas jeered Parker for being irrelevant, whereas Arenas believes he can go viral “while I’m on vacation.”
Arenas got a big laugh out of The Odd Couple clip being from “a YouTube channel that’s company-owned.”
Apparently, Arenas and Parker have a history dating back to last year. Parker was one of many sports hosts to be bothered by Arenas claiming older NBA players couldn’t compete in this era.
Parker also was not the only host to rip Arenas over his South Sudan diss. Meadowlark Media and SiriusXM host Amin El-Hassan offered a thoughtful response to Arenas’ jokes and encouraged sports hosts to not always revert to clowning issues they don’t fully understand.
Arenas may think little of Parker, but he’s keeping the content machine humming by continuing a beef with someone he claims is irrelevant.
