Arenas on Empty, Grant Stalls

With two minutes left and his team hopelessly beaten, Gilbert Arenas of Grant High came out of the game Friday night, pulled off his jersey and quickly took his seat on the bench.

There was brief applause from Grant fans, but Arenas was in no mood to accept recognition for his remarkable three-year prep basketball career. This was the end, and Arenas had gone out shooting blanks.

Near the conclusion of the third quarter, he had made two of 21 attempts. Grant (19-7) proved no match for No. 5-seeded Westchester in dropping a 68-41 first-round City Championship playoff game to the host Comets (17-9).

Arenas finished with 20 points, giving him 2,124 points in his career, which is a school record and one of the highest totals in City Section history. But it offered no consolation for his five-of-26 shooting performance.

“I don’t know what was going on,” Arenas said. “Last week, it was the free throws. Now it was the jump shot. They were letting me get everything I wanted. [The shots] weren’t falling.”

Westchester, the defending City champion, had too much size and experience for the Lancers. Chris Osborne, a 6-foot-9 center bound for Arizona State, scored 17 points. Lou Wright, younger brother of Clipper forward Lorenzen Wright, had 14 points. Eric Knight, younger brother of UCLA guard Billy Knight, scored 12 points.

“They came out playing real hard,” Grant Coach Howard Levine said of the Comets. “They did a real good job inside the paint and shot better than we expected.”

Wright, a 6-6 junior, connected on four three-point baskets. The Comets also used a 6-11 center, Chad Bell, off the bench. Grant’s tallest player was 6-5 Krishna Evans.

Grant trailed at halftime by 12, 34-22. The Lancers thought if Arenas could start making some shots, they could stay close. But he missed his first seven shots of the third quarter, and Grant was outscored, 19-9.

“We knew he [Arenas] was a good player,” Coach Ed Azzam of Westchester said. “We tried to pressure him when he had the ball.”

At no point did Arenas start to feel comfortable. Balls kept bouncing in and out of the basket. And his task was made more difficult by the aggressive defense of 6-5 junior Terrence Lawson.

Levine refused to let Arenas’ struggles in his final game ruin the memories of what he accomplished over the past three seasons.

“I think 74 games of what he’s done at Grant will override a bad shooting day,” Levine said. “No one is going to forget what he’s done for three years here. I loved watching Gilbert play ball. When he was in the open court, he was an amazing player to watch.”

Bound for Arizona, Arenas almost left Grant for Sylmar during the summer. Afterward, teammate Sharone Hakman reminded Arenas that despite the defeat, “at least we ended it together.”

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Arenas Profile A look at the career statistics for Arizona-bound guard Gilbert Arenas of Grant High *--*

Year G Pts. Avg. Reb. Avg. Ast. Avg. Stl. Avg. ‘96-97 22 496 22.5 139 6.3 88 4.0 57 2.6 ‘97-98 26 774 29.8 227 8.7 148 5.7 115 4.4 ‘98-99 26 854 32.8 204 7.8 79 3.0 121 4.7 Totals 74 2124 28.7 570 7.7 313 4.2 293 4.0

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