In 2006-07, Gilbert Arenas was a top 5 fantasy pick. In 2008-09, he was an injured mess hanging out on your waiver wire, hitting on your sister and asking to borrow your truck for a few days. In 2009-10, he was overrated and being picked in rounds 3-5 in drafts. In 2010-11, Hibachi will be underrated and I’ll fall into the loving arms of Candice Swanepoel (as long as we’re predicting stuff). Or maybe that fallin’ feelin’ stems from where ol’ Gil is being taken in mock drafts this season, namely, as deep as the 12th round.
I understand the fears everyone has about owning Arenas. He’s crushed fantasy teams for a solid four years now. Crushed ’em like the Fat Boys. That said, the Arenas of old still has a few more years before the old of Arenas shows up. He’s averaged 7.4 assists in the 34 games he’s played in the last two seasons after never averaging more than 6.3 in his first seven. His 31.9 Usg% last season was the highest of his career. The Wiz leaned heavily on Arenas last season and, physically, he held up.
The finger guns thing? C’mon what are the odds something like that happens again this year? Three-to-one. Yeah, okay. Fair play.
The knee, the guns – those problems won’t follow him onto the court (or into the locker room) this season. Arenas is falling into the seventh and eighth rounds because he’s playing alongside John Wall. He’s falling into the 10th-12th rounds because people are confusing past problems with future ones. His PER has slipped from 22 to 18.6 in the last four seasons, yes. He attempted the most shots from the floor of his career last season (19) and only managed to average 22 points out of it, sure. His .411 FG% last season was an improvement from the previous seasons, but was as detrimental to fantasy teams in the beginning of the season as Dwight Howard’s FT%. On top of it all, he’ll slide over to a new position that asks that he pass less, shoot more and, perhaps average fewer than 31.5 minutes per game for the first time since he was a rookie. But … wait. What was I talking about?
Oh yeah, I was trying to make a case for Gilbert Arenas being the seventh or eighth person you put onto your fantasy roster. Look at it this way, he averaged 23 pts / 4 rbds / 7 asts with a combined 3.1 steals+treys last season. Even if all those numbers dip because of Wall, he’s still an 18/4/4 guy who will likely add more treys, fewer turnovers and can’t get much worse from the floor. That’s Tyreke Evans with treys, my man. You think Evans will still be around 80 picks into your draft? Expect the following from Gil this season:
.425/.745/2.5 3pt/19 pts/5 rbd/4.5 ast/1 stl/0.5 blk/2.5 tov
