After going from expressing skepticism over Barack Obama’s candidacy to adding the President to the “Black Rushmore” series of tattoos on his leg, Wizards G Gilbert Arenas is in danger of “winding up with a wheel of Comte made out of strands of Bill Walton’s hair or something,” writes DC Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg. On a more serious tip, while crediting trainer Tim Grover with “saving my career”, Arenas has harsh words for his employers when it comes to trusting Agent Zero with his own injury rehab. From the Washington Times’ Mike Jones :

“They handled me going off what they had seen before and said, ‘You can’t lift weights because you might chip a bone,’ ” Arenas said. “That’s their experience. Everybody has theirs. It took me two years to realize that I was a case study. Ultimately, I can prove I can get hurt, sit out two years and come back and be as good as I was.

“If you have a kid that loves basketball, that eats, sleeps, drinks and thinks basketball and all he knows is basketball and he gets hurt and he’s your franchise player, you need to hold him back from himself,” Arenas said. “If I’m saying I feel good and you know it’s supposed to take six months, instead of letting me at four months run … they should have held me back. Rather than saying, ‘Let’s let this guy do what he wants and use him to sell tickets’ – sometimes you have to protect players from themselves. I don’t feel like I got that type of protection. But, I don’t judge them for that. Some things just happen. I told them I felt OK because I wanted to play, and they did what they did.”

Arenas – normally the one for brash predictions and bold statements – this time declines to join in.

“Where did we finish in the East last year?” he asked. “Last. Then until we prove ourselves, that’s what we are. You can’t predict. Anyone can guess where we’re gonna be at. But until the ball goes up in the air, we’re last in the East. We took some steps in the right direction this summer, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I saw. If you wanna say stuff, it’s just for conversation, just for the chat rooms. And it’s all great and wonderful, but it doesn’t mean anything.”