How Agent Zero Saved D.C.

By Sean Gregory / Washington

Gilbert Arenas, wonder guard of the Washington Wizards, goes by a superhero nickname, Agent Zero, as in the number on his uniform. Here's a more appropriate appellation: Agent Weirdo. Why? This is a guy who at halftime of one game took a shower--fully uniformed--to cool down. He tickles the underarm of a teammate before tip-off for good luck. His addictions are many and, Arenas admits, "pointless," including bad DVDs, vintage jerseys and his latest, crappy basketballs. Arenas is collecting the synthetic balls the NBA unveiled and dumped this season after players complained about cutting their fingers on them. "I hope he never goes to a party where there's cocaine dust in the air," says Drew Cleary, the strength and conditioning coach for the Wizards. "If he ever gets the flavor for it, he's so obsessive-compulsive, that will be the end of his career."

The ones getting high on the addictive Arenas are the denizens of D.C., who can cheer for a team with playoff potential and an MVP-caliber player in the prime of his career. Led by Arenas, the NBA's second leading scorer (at 29.4 points per game) and least conventional superstar, the Wizards (28-19) had the second best record in the admittedly woeful Eastern Conference as of Feb. 6. In Washington, only the Pentagon has a longer-range arsenal than Arenas does. And Arenas may be more accurate. He has scored more than 50 points three times this season, including a 60-point outing against the Lakers in Los Angeles; hit two game-winning three-pointers at the buzzer; and made dozens of acrobatic shots. The ability to hit long bombs or flash to the basket makes Arenas a nightmare to cover. "He's storybook," says former NBA guard and current TNT broadcaster Kenny Smith, of Arenas.

It's a hard-knock story. To reach an elite level, Arenas has fought through personal and professional rejections, most recently his exclusion from the Team U.S.A. roster that played (below expectations) in the World Championship last summer. It's an omission that befuddles Smith: "He's doing things only the greatest players in the league have done."

And enjoying every minute of it, which in today's image-driven sports world is also, sadly, somewhat strange. "NBA players are so scared of being viewed in a certain way that they can't be who they want to be," Arenas says. "They put on a mask." Arenas takes it off--just for fun. During the home opener this season, he wore a satin boxing robe for pregame introductions. He reaches out to struggling kids on MySpace and has sponsored a video-game team.

Gilbertology offers many unusual tenets, among them: 1) Thin the air in your house with a special air conditioner to mimic living at a high altitude, so that when you're at low altitude--say, on a basketball court in Washington--you can breathe easily. 2) Hold extra practice sessions at midnight. 3) Pull pranks on fellow players and dare them to retaliate. "Don't play with a guy who doesn't have a conscience about things," Arenas warns. During a road trip, Arenas filled teammate Andray Blatche's hotel bathtub with coffee. And 4) dream of a post-playing career in advertising. He has strange ideas for commercials for his shoe company, Adidas, whose tagline is "Impossible is nothing."

The "impossible" tag fits Arenas like one of his kicks. His mother abandoned Arenas in a Miami housing project when he was almost 4. His father, then living in Tampa, retrieved him. Three years later, Gilbert Sr. drove with his son cross-country to chase an acting career in Los Angeles. The Gilberts were out of money on arrival. "I'm thinking, that's not cool," Gilbert Sr. remembers. For three days, they slept in Dad's Mazda RX-7. Arenas Sr. soon found steady work, although he never struck it big as an actor.

A dramatic scene unfolded four years ago, during Arenas' second season. As the Washington Post first reported, while Arenas was warming up for his former club, the Golden State Warriors, a woman shouted at him from the stands in Miami. "Gilbert! I'm your mom!" she declared. Arenas froze. After the game, Mary Francis Robinson gave him her phone number. He still hasn't called. "I used to look in the mirror, and all I wanted from God was to one day meet her," Arenas says. "He gave me that wish. That was it."

Although Arenas played high school ball in Los Angeles, backyard power UCLA didn't recruit him. So he dashed to the desert--the University of Arizona--where he took the number 0--in his mind, the number of minutes his doubters thought he would play as a freshman. After helping the Wildcats reach the NCAA championship game in 2001, Arenas watched every team bypass him in the first round of the NBA draft. He cried. "The teams in this league said no to Gilbert Arenas," says an amazed Dallas Mavericks general manager Donnie Nelson--whose team didn't have a first-round pick.

Arenas fuels himself on such insults. Last summer's Team U.S.A. snub offered fresh motivation. "It was predetermined," he says of the selection process: 14 players were flown to China, then Korea, for tournament tune-ups, although only 12 would make the World Championship roster. "They flew me all the way out there, and I thought I had a big shot. It was frustrating." Firing a dart at Team U.S.A. and Duke University coach Mike Krzyzewski, Arenas wrote on an nba.com blog, "I'll give up one NBA season to play against Duke." He swore to score 50 points against both the Phoenix Suns and the Portland Trail Blazers, whose head coaches, Mike D'Antoni and Nate McMillan, were Team U.S.A. assistants. He's halfway there, having dropped 54 on the Suns. The Blazers are on his calendar for Feb. 11.

Then Arenas will relish his trip to Las Vegas for the NBA All-Star Game, on Feb. 18. He has finally made the starting five. It's a chance for him to win over a global audience, and--surprise, surprise--his mind is firing from long range. "I'm trying to get two blimps," he says, smiling. "They'd just fly around the city and say, AGENT ZERO HAS ARRIVED." Let's hope he's just getting started.