Wizards Arenas to miss start of NBA season due to knee surgery

There’s an old saying advising against “putting moldy bread back in the bread box”. The Washington Wizards may have been wise to pay attention to that aphorism before handing Gilbert Arenas a six year $111 million contract knowing his history of knee trouble. Arenas had surgery on his left knee on Wednesday, and though no ‘official’ timetable for his return has been announced he speculated that it would be well into December before he’d be able to play.

The surgery was Arenas’ third in the past 17 months. Last season, he only played 13 regular season games and was forced to ‘shut it down’ for the NBA playoffs. He originally injured the knee in February of 2007, rushed his recovery and reaggravated it in summer league play. He went under the knife again in November and was for all intents and purposes done for the season. He took a more pragmatic approach to rehab this time, but when the knee “didn’t respond” as quickly as hoped he opted for the third surgery.

Despite his completely unproductive season, Arenas had the moxie to opt out of his contract this summer and become a restricted free agent. He claims that his eventual six year, $111 million contract with the Wizards—the largest in franchise history—was actually below market value as he wanted to give the team “flexibility under the salary cap”.

Arenas tried to spin the latest operation as a “proactive move” that will allow him to come back faster for the good of the team, but clearly at this point he’s got no motivation to rush himself back to the lineup. Privately, many observers are calling the December target date for his return overly optimistic and some doubt whether the 3 time All Star will play this year at all.

Since the Wizards knew of Arenas’ troublesome left knee and were still willing to break out the checkbook to resign him they have no one to blame for their problems but themselves.