LeBron James might not have captured a championship during his first stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers, but he had little trouble advancing past the first round of the NBA Playoffs early in his career. Despite Gilbert Arenas’s explosive performances, LeBron’s Cavaliers handled the Washington Wizards with relative ease in both of their playoff meetings in the mid-2000s. Gil firmly contends that those losses weren’t on him, though, insisting the series was much tighter than the final outcomes suggest.
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The three-time All-Star adamantly denied a claim that he was 3-10 against James in the postseason during a recent rant on his personal YouTube page, No Chill Gil. While Arenas is technically correct, as he finished with just seven playoff losses and three wins for a total of 10 games, the viewer’s point still stands; Cleveland owned Washington in the playoffs.
“Just ’cause the Wizards got their a** beat. Don’t put that on me. I didn’t play against that n**** year two and year three,” Arenas sounded off. “I was hurt already. I just played a few games to get my contract to show them the knee was good. That doesn’t count. That series doesn’t count against me.”
Arenas was referring to his second series loss to the Cavs in 2008, when he was sidelined for the final two games of Cleveland’s six-game victory. The Wizards actually won their first game without Gil, 88-87, in Game 5, though, hurting the former guard’s claim that the losses weren’t on him.
“I played against them one year, 4-2, that’s it. That’s me. That’s my playoff experience,” Arenas said, referring to his 2006 first-round bout with Cleveland. “Healthy, I’ve only actually played healthy in three series … I played Bulls, beat them and then got swept. This n**** said, ‘Yeah, he got swept in the second round.’ N*****, that was Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O’Neal, Alonzo Mourning, them n*****.”
The 43-year-old made it clear that, even if he did get swept, it wasn’t against any ordinary squad. Gil wasn’t even certain if his Washington team ever defeated Wade and Shaq while they were paired together in Miami. Acknowledging how dominant that duo was, Arenas didn’t mind taking that loss; It was one he could live with.
Gil’s losses to LeBron were different, though. “LeBron was everything advertised back then. We had the better team, and we tried everything,” Arenas claimed. “Make him a shooter. Make him a passer. Make him a driver. Double-team a n****. We did it all.”
While Arenas had solid veteran support in Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler, the unstoppable force that was LeBron James ultimately proved too much to overcome. In their 2006 playoff clash, Arenas had a golden opportunity to push the series to a Game 7 but missed two critical free throws in a defining moment. Had he led the Wizards to victory that night, the narrative around his career might look very different today.
