gil222

SoCal High School & Prep Report

Post-Season Play: A Chat With
Grant's Gilbert Arenas--(February 22, 1998)

Yesterday morning, while coaching a youth league team which plays at Grant High School in Van Nuys, we looked over to the corner of the gym, and saw Gilbert Arenas (6'-3" Jr. PG), Grant High School's all-star point guard who just the night before had scored 42 points against Crenshaw, the defending City and State Champions. Gil was watching the youth league action as intently as if it was a City Finals contest. Actually, Gil was busy watching one of Grant's future prospects, Michael Charleston (6'-3" Fr. SG/F), whose team was in the process of playing a semi-final playoff game in the league. We had an opportunity to talk with Gil about a few things and here's what he had to say.

Gil said that he couldn't believe the depth of the Crenshaw Cougars. We congratulated him on scoring 42 points, and he modestly smiled. We asked him what he thought about Crenshaw, and he said the obvious: "They're great". We asked him if he remembered who he was guarding most of the night and who was set up to guard him, and he replied "I honestly don't know. It was so confusing because they have 15 players on their bench, and it seemed like all of them played against me at one time or another. They all dribble the same, shoot the same, and it was like having 15 of the same guy on the floor; they never got tired because they're so deep."

We talked a bit about Adir Levy and the face mask he had to wear following his surgery after the sucker-punch following Grant's win over Canoga Park in the next-to last league game, and Gil told me "With that thing on he just couldn't see well. He never got his shot going. He was going to pull it off, but coach wouldn't let him."

About his post-season plans, he said that he and Devin Montgomery from San Fernando High are going to play "Hoop It Up" first, and then he'll play on the Pump Brothers team which will enter the Rockfish spring league. I asked him about Rockfish, and he wasn't really sure about the details, just saying "I'll be playing for the Pumps, and if they're going, then I guess I am too."

And the big news on Gil is that this summer he's been invited to the adidas ABCD camp, where he'll join some of the select talent in the country.

We then talked about Grant's prospects for the future, and Gil was encouraged. "We're a pretty young team. And look at Charleston over there. He played Frosh-Soph ball and he would come to the varsity practices, and would just dominate some of our players. He's really good, and we sure could have used him against Crenshaw yesterday."

Charleston will be playing for an all-star team in the next few weeks which will be competing against other all-star teams from around Los Angeles. We'll have a profile of the team and the other players on it soon, and you might say that we know most of the players well, so our sources of information are certainly well-informed. We'll have more later on that and on Arenas soon. Stay tuned.