Washington’s Michael Jordan still moving around Clippers’ Quentin Richardson in the 2nd half of the game. (Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Washington’s Michael Jordan still moving around Clippers’ Quentin Richardson in the 2nd half of the game. (Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Washington’s Michael Jordan still moving around Clippers’ Quentin Richardson in the 2nd half of the game. (Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Washington’s Michael Jordan still moving around Clippers’ Quentin Richardson in the 2nd half of the game. (Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
The Washington Wizards hired Michael Jordan as the president of basketball operations in the year 2000. After a tumultuous three seasons under MJ, then Wizards’ owner Abe Pollin fired the former from the team.
39-year-old MJ was the best player in the team. Replacing him was a challenge, but ultimately they brought in Gilbert Arenas. Arenas was coming off a breakout season with the Warriors. In the next eight years, ‘Agent Zero’ became one of the best players in the franchise history.
In his recent appearance at Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay, Arenas described how he joined the Wizards. He said, “It was basically Washington and the Clippers. What ends up happening is I went to go visit (Wizards) in April and my dad asked him ‘what happened between you and Michael Jordan’?”
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Arenas spoke about why then Wizards owner Abe Pollin had fired MJ. He said, “He (Abe Pollin) told ‘I didn’t like the way he was talking to the team. The way he was treating the team, I asked all the players do they want him back, and the players said no. so I had to re-neg on the deal that I did with MJ. I felt bad. But I did what the team wanted me to do.'”
He then revealed how Pollin convinced him. “He (Pollin) was like ‘listen if you come here whatever we have, whatever we get, it’s yours. Just get me out of this MJ Horror. You’ll be the face here. We don’t have a star. We have Clint Portis, but you can be the real star with your personality and your play.'”
He added, “When I decided to come my whole thing was like ‘I have one job to do and he has my back. My job is to make it less MJ talk.'”
How good was Agent Zero in the post-MJ Wizards?
After firing Michael Jordan, Pollin and the Wizards’ front office signed Gilbert Arenas in the 2003 NBA free agency. Agent Zero initially looked like a decent scorer averaging 19.6 points, 5 assists and 4.6 rebounds in his first season.
For the next three seasons, Arenas become a scoring machine for the Wizards. He consistently finished in the top 5 for the point scored per match and made the All-NBA team thrice.
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In the 2007-08 season, Agent Zero suffered from a knee injury, keeping him out for the majority of games. He suffered from yet another knee injury next season, and only played 2 games.
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In 2010, he left the Wizards after having played eight seasons with them. In those eight seasons, he averaged 25 points, 5.3 assists and 3.9 rebounds per game.
With a career marred by injuries and off-court controversies, Agent Zero’s career has always been a story of what could have been. We can only marvel his 3 seasons Arenas was one of the best scorers in his prime. If he had only stayed healthy, he surely would have ended up in the Hall of Fame.
