The New York Post’s venerable “Hoops Du Jour” columnist Peter Vecsey (above)  took aim at the Washington Post’s Mike Wise earlier today, accusing the former of tailoring reports of the infamous Gilbert Arenas/Javaris Crittendon locker room pistol exchange to something uncomfortably close to Agent Zero’s preferred version of events.  Keep in mind, this comes after Vecsey’s own account has been challenged by Wise.  DC Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg carefully tuned to Wise’s afternoon show on Washington’s 106.7 The FanTuesday and in addition to hearing Vecsey accused of accepting interest free loans from former Nets owner Joe Taub, Wise provided the following rip job (link courtesy Jason Cohen) :

“Peter Vecsey would be a flat-out joke in my business, but he’s not funny. He’s mean-spirited, and he’s just about heartless. I’ll never forget the time I came back from talking to a kid who tried to commit suicide in Dallas after he ingested a bottle of aspirin. Leon Smith was his name, and he never should have come out of high school, and the Mavericks should have had a much better support system for an obviously troubled young man who just happened to have talent. Vecsey made cruel jokes about this kid’s suicide attempt afterward in his column. Now, I don’t care if you slam me or anybody else, but Leon Smith was raised in a foster home called Lydia Children’s Home in Chicago. He was a ward of the state of Illinois due to neglect from his parents when he was 5 years old.”

“When you do something like that, when you make fun of that kid, you’re not just insensitive, you’re a rotten human being. You’re a lousy person. You don’t deserve the respect of a punk-ass kid at the Rucker League thinking, ‘Man, Peter Vecsey used to be something, didn’t he?’ You old bitter man. You make me sick.”

Steinberg goes on to quote a number of Vecsey’s gags at Smith’s expense (eg. “Leon Smith’s Nets tryout could be viewed as another suicide attempt”), and while he deserves full credit for spending serious Google time today, I’m curious if Wise tried to publicly defend Smith from such abuse when it was happening a decade ago.  Rather than, y’know, the same day he was publicly named as Gilbert Arenas’ best buddy.