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Gilbert Arenas sounds off on new Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon being "cheap." "You’re going to have the next generation of talent begging not to come to Portland. Agents are going to refuse that their players get drafted there. If this is real and it’s getting out — you’re talking about not giving a masseuse a room? That’s improving your team! You pay for it, but you can’t pay the extra $250 to $500 for her to have a room a night? I don’t understand why companies and business people find the cheapest things to get rid of that are so important. I’m sorry that I’m going to say it because I don’t want nobody to lose their job; how many individual coaches do you need on the roster? I was looking at the Laker bench; there’s more coaches than players on there! It’s like they took half the s*** up. If y’all don’t get y’all non-worthy asses in the back somewhere! You got seven coaches, and then you got 15 in the back row looking like a damn Wu-Tang show! How many iPads you need? The f*** you need an iPad for when they put it on a jumbotron? Like, you don’t think that we need to review some s***? I don’t need six people... it looks like my house when I was raising my kids. Everybody got an iPad; entertain yourself! That’s what it looks like now. So trying to go cheap on things that are actually needed, when you can cut costs everywhere else."
Gilbert Arenas sounds off on new Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon being "cheap."
— NBA Base (@TheNBABase) April 24, 2026
"You’re going to have the next generation of talent begging not to come to Portland. Agents are going to refuse that their players get drafted there. If this is real and it’s getting out — you’re… pic.twitter.com/HxL4yuk4Gj
Arenas' father, three-time NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas, said his son wants a chance to show what he can do at the college level. “I (Gilbert) said, ‘If you want to come back again, why would you?’ He (Alijah) said, ‘I want to lead college in scoring. I don’t think these people know what I could do,'” the elder Arenas said on “Hoopin’ N Hollerin” in March.
Q. When you look at all the records LeBron James has amassed during his career, where does playing the most regular season and playoff games in NBA history rank amongst LeBron's accolades? Gilbert Arenas: Second tier. This is second tier. What I mean is like he just beat someone who just who's a two-time All-NBA player. So it didn't matter how many games he played. It didn't matter how many games he played. Playing games and being dominant is very two different things. (…) It should be starting. How many games did you start and was like the best player on the team, or something like that. But just checking in the game to play…
Richard Jefferson: So 6 a.m. there's 40 federal agents at your house. Was there a helicopter, a batter ram? Gilbert Arenas: No the batter ram. It took them too long to get up the stairs, so I figured they set it… Jefferson: Over a speaker, like ‘we have you surrounded’. Arenas: Surrounded. Come outside with your hands up. Jefferson: I'm fascinated by this. Arenas: I just thought they came and got me. Jefferson: 6:00 AM they say, "We have you surrounded. Come outside." Gilbert Arenas: I knew they didn't have me surrounded though cuz the house is kind of big. So, you know what I mean? Like, I know they didn't get in the backyard, but I understood what they were saying. Jefferson: So, after that, they said, "You have you surrounded." They told you to come outside. Did you know why you were getting arrested? Arenas: No. This wasn't like we're telling people that we brought guns to an arena. This was completely different. Like even when I'm running down the stairs after you guys seen me like I'm running. Hey, I still didn't know why I was arrested. I just be honest. I wasn't shocked. (Laughs) When I got out and I was looking online, I was like, "Oh my god, I thought it was the…’.
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Gilbert Arenas: Manu Ginobili, did he actually fit the Spurs program right or was Pop that brilliant to understand what he had and just let him play? And these guys are fit around your style because, you know, we're all smart enough to do it because Ginobili from Argentina, he is like the number one option. So, his style fits how he played: ISO player, let's get it, pick and roll, I'm going downhill. There was no Tim Duncan he passed the ball to. There was none of that. Think about his style of play. Flashy, up and down, speed, energetic, electric. That was his style of basketball. That wasn't the Spurs style of basketball. Those shooting guards and three men, you sit your ass in the corner, you pump, fake, one, dribble shot, right? Pass and swing shot. Ginobili was a wild card, but they recognized it. Let him do him. And you have to be a smart coach to understand when you have a guy like that on your team to utilize him. And then you get your Kawhi Leonard. I mean Kawhi was the Spurs player, right? That's your typical Spurs player. Derrick White, that's the Spurs motto, right? But sometimes, hey, we need a little bit of different here.
Gilbert Arenas: I naturally just have this weird energy where I can just go all day. So, Chris Mullin is the one who honed it in. When I was my first couple years at Golden State, when I found out what Kobe did, I just stayed in. I was sleeping in the gym. I just stayed there. And then Chris Mullin had to teach me how to like confined it. Like going 70% for five hours is… that's stupid. Go a 110 for 40 minutes at a time. Do it. Go home, rest three hours, four hours, come back, go home, rest, then come back. Instead of just sitting here and saying you worked out for seven hours because it has to translate. And I didn't understand what he was talking about. And he said, "Yeah, you can shoot a thousand shots practice style. What about the game style?"
Gilbert Arenas: So when Luke Walton was basically telling about Kobe Bryant’s workouts, I had to see it for myself. So, we were in town and he said, "Yeah, Kobe comes at 3:00 AM.” I remember saying that. So, I took a cab over there and sat in the stands, right? Got there at 2:30 AM, sat in the stands, right? And then sure enough comes walking in and it's like, damn, it's the way he was working out. Imagine a Game Seven, a million dollars on the line, point game, going against each other. That's how it looked against him and his trainer.
Richard Jefferson: What is a bigger in your ear moment? Is it Lance Stevenson blowing in LeBron's ear or LeBron whispering sweet nothings to you at the free throw line before you brick those free throws and lost the playoff game? LeBron tapped you and said, "If you miss this, you're going to lose." And you did. Gilbert Arenas: I mean, you should give credit to him. That's like psychic stuff.
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Gilbert Arenas: The G League is going to be in trouble. Why would an NBA prospect go to the G League when they can go to college? G League is paying me 49,000. College is paying me a million, million and a half, 500,000. So, if I got eligibility, I'm going to search for it and I'm going to try to get it instead of playing the G League for $49,000.
Gilbert Arenas: Every player, if you know you're going to be done within two years, you should start cutting your losses to try to get back to as close as normal as possible, because if you don't have a job right after that, it's all negative income. When we were talking about hard bills, you're talking about light, cars, insurance, baby mamas, right? Paying your folks, paying their house, paying their cars, right? So some of y'all can leave and your hard bills 100,000, 150, 200, 300, hard bills. You remember like when you're playing in the NBA you're collecting bills. Anthony Davis, the house he just sold, $39 million. What you think that water bill is? That light bill, the grass bill, right? He's spending $45,000 probably a month just to upkeep it. Just that house, not the cars in that house, not family, friends, not other houses. So it's the hard bills that get us at the end. And it normally takes an athlete two years to adjust to his new life, because the embarrassment of selling sh*t cuz you don't want people to think you're broke. So you hold on to sh*t that you don't supposed to and going broke. And that happens a lot.
Given the uncertainty that comes with being dangled in trade rumors, the locker room has to be a very emotional environment. But some players are using this opportunity to pull off some jokes at the expense of their teammates, if Gilbert Arenas' story is to be believed. “You wanted to mess with somebody? All you had to say is [the SportsCenter theme]. Breaking news. What happened. Who? Your a** been traded bro,” Arenas recalled in the latest episode of his podcast. “Every locker room got at least one dude walking around like ‘yo bro, you got traded’ every 10 minutes.”
According to former NBA All-Star guard Gilbert Arenas, this was not always the case, as press people during the 80s and 90s did not engage in negative talk about players or speak ill of them. Arenas cited Michael Jordan‘s performance in the Barcelona Olympics as an example. “There was no negativity in the early 80s, 90s. The game was glorified and pushed positive. They didn’t bash Magic/Bird/Kareem for losing in finals…. Imagine USA ’92 team today, and looking at Michael Jordan box scores are talked about today from how he performed. In ’92, nobody knows MJ was struggling in Olympics and shooting that bad against guys who were wearing AAU uniforms… We didn’t hear struggling,”