Gilbert Arenas was one of the best scorers in the NBA in his prime. But as good as he was, LeBron James messed with his head to get him to miss two key free throws in a playoff series.
Back in 2006, the Washington Wizards were down 113-112 against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 6 of their first-round series. James reached out and whispered something to Arenas, who wound up missing both freebies.
Fast forward to today, and the former All-Star admitted that he actually had to reach out to Kobe Bryant and train with Black OPS to get his mental strength back after that.
Gilbert Arenas Had To Train With Black Ops To Get Over LeBron James Messing With His Head
(Transcript via Fubo)
“I need to do something about this. I remember talking to Jrue, ‘Who’s mentally strong in this world?’ He was like, ‘Usually, blacks ops, Navy SEALS.’ I said, ‘Find me a black-op guy… I don’t want to think about those free throws no more, I really need to mentally check-in. What is Kobe over there doing?’
Kobe was working out with this Black Ops guy named Frank, out of San Francisco. Went to San Francisco. I don’t even have no plan. Met with him. I remember the trainer Jrue came with him, and he was like, ‘What’s the problem?’ I was like, ‘There’s no problem. I just don’t want one. I want to be mentally strong. I’ve missed free throws and someone made me think about it but I don’t want to think about it no more.
And from there, everything became mental. Everything he did was just mental. I stayed there for a week. That’s it. That’s all I needed. Just to see something different. I remember, our first one was a warm-up. He said, we gotta go to the blue house… Four hours. That was our warm-up. Four hours running in the sand to the blue house.
And I remember, he didn’t know nothing about basketball. This is just all physical. Running up the hills, down, until you bleed. Like, my trainer was throwing up blood. He says, ‘When you throw up blood, you keep going.’ I’m like alright. And that’s the first time I heard it, he said, ‘Yo we work out till we black out.’ Alright cool. I never knew what he meant till Kobe used to say it. We’re gonna keep working out till one of us pass out. And that was the mentality.”
NBA players are just like the rest of us, they just happen to make way more money and be much better at basketball. So, props to Arenas for doing whatever he needed to get past those mental woes.
