Last month on The Dan Patrick Show, Dan Patrick forced Gilbert Arenas to clarify one of his most viral takes about the NBA. It forced the former NBA star to do something he is often reticent to do: explain himself.
Arenas had just tossed out a take on Gil’s Arena (his live digital show produced in partnership with Underdog Fantasy) saying that, for the NBA to reel in its extreme offensive output, the league should toss out its European stars. Patrick asked what he was trying to say, and Arenas ultimately revealed his take to be sarcastic.
“For an American-style for an athletic kid, the Euro has done something that we’re just not teaching,” Arenas told Patrick. “That’s skill. That’s team. That’s the understanding of the team overall, so when you have (European players) in the game and they’re pushing the limit, that means everything goes up.
“Popularity goes up, money goes up. If the game didn’t expand to a Euro-style, there wouldn’t be $350 million contracts … if you don’t like where the game is, then let’s blame [them]. It was more the sarcastic way of saying … ‘let’s go back to 1985 basketball and see how you like that one.’”
The formula was familiar for Arenas, a calculated hater. Whether he is calling New York Knicks fan favorite Jalen Brunson or reigning NBA Finals MVP Nikola Jokic overrated, or claiming European players both elevated and ruined the league, his takes are a starting point. Not an end. He has become a fixture on basketball fans’ social media timelines and video feeds, but it’s rare to get a full sense of what Arenas means or where he stands.
Gil says Jokic might be statistically the worst MVP winner… 👀 @ShannonSharpe @GilsArenaShow pic.twitter.com/BCo3FD0iNO
— Nightcap (@NightcapShow_) April 4, 2024
“That’s my gift. Throwing it out there so everyone can just take it and dissect it,” Arenas laughed to Patrick at the end of the interview. “I get ‘em good.”
Arenas is a professional provocateur. He belongs to a pioneering group of athletes in media only by technicality. The three-time NBA All-Star would more gladly set a bomb off than spread the gospel of the game. Arenas is the anti-JJ Redick; the sports media Keemstar.
That description would hardly insult Agent Zero.
Around the same time he went on with Patrick, Arenas was asked by Stephen A. Smith to explain what Gil’s Arena is in his words.
“It’s live reality TV with sports,” Arenas said. “It’s ex-athletes talking about the game live with a reality TV style.”
Arenas explained that in a business where Netflix is bidding for WWE rights and streaming is winning, he has to shapeshift. In his view, he can’t afford for Gil’s Arena to be simply a basketball talk show.
Instead, the show leans into the interpersonal. Its YouTube channel shows popular clips of Arenas and his gang of mid-2000s NBA journeymen SLAMMING this and ERUPTING at that. It is a drama channel wearing a sports content mask. The show, like any good reality hit or YouTube sensation, is just as much about infighting, drama, and insults as it is analysis or even good conversation.
It’s The Talk for dudes who played hoops in high school and watch YouTube in the middle of the afternoon.
All of this points toward Gil’s Arena working exactly as intended, with Arenas as ringmaster. The show scored what is likely a significant investment from Underdog early on, so the cash is flowing. And whether you’re talking Spencer Pratt, Snookie, or Omarosa, every great reality star is there to make sure you can’t possibly change the channel.
Where does that leave Arenas besides comfortable financially and with his ego’s cup fuller than full? Does he matter?
There are a select few people who actually dictate the news cycle in basketball media. Unless you’re an active part of the NBA or your name is Stephen A., Bill, or JJ, good luck. In the past, I theorized that Arenas had the chance to become the NBA Pat McAfee, but he seems to want something different.
Maybe Arenas will never dictate the news cycle among the dignitaries in NBA media, but he gets the people going.
There is an art to provocation. You have to be smart enough to know what people are thinking about, where their minds are most likely to go, and how to undermine that. It’s not just contrarianism, it’s predictive takery. It’s machine learning First Take.
There’s space for it in basketball discourse, of course. Arenas has already proven that. More than half a million people subscribe to Gil’s Arena on YouTube. He’s also proven he has higher hopes.
In the interview with Smith, the longtime NBA guard acknowledged he aspires to join a more traditional network sports talk show someday. During laid-back appearances on Nightcap with Shannon Sharpe, Arenas is often quite thoughtful about the life of an NBA athlete or what happens inside the locker rooms of teams around the league.
We can’t hand-wave Gil’s Arena entirely, either. While it’s mostly a vehicle for Arenas to go viral, I enjoy guests like Kenyon Martin and Lexie Brown. Before all this, during his NBA career, Arenas wrote blogs for the league website that were incredibly popular and insightful. He is a pioneer.
On Sunday’s episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, Simmons and guest Ryen Russillo wondered together whether Arenas was “doing a bit” while debating the worst NBA media take of the season. Neither host could make sense of Arenas’ priorities, but they agreed the backlash he gets on social media ultimately helps him.
There’s something about having expertise and dressing it up that is grating. Arenas uses his powers for evil rather than good. He knows the game on a deep level, and must still love it to spend so much of his time talking about it. But rather than spread that love or build it up in fans, basketball is merely an instrument for drama for Agent Zero.
Arenas is not doing a bit, but that doesn’t mean he’s serious. If you told me it was all for money, I would hardly blame him. The part that doesn’t make sense is that Arenas’ shtick doesn’t seem to be a means to an end. All of YouTube and internet content is a click farm now. Anyone who creates content online titles and frames things in a certain way to get attention, and in turn money.
What makes Arenas unique is there does not appear to be a higher calling. There is nothing you can point to and say he trolls so that he can trojan horse what he really wants to be doing. He’s not hiding anything.
Arenas was born of basketball, but he is a creature of the internet. For some, that means freedom. Instead, Arenas has embraced the most obvious and tired aspects of living online.
The worst part is he knows it. The joke is on us. He gets us good.
