Gilbert Arenas and Adidas. Credits: USA Today Sports and Imago

Gilbert Arenas is one of the smartest players the NBA has ever seen. Back in 2022, during an interview with DJ VladTV, Agent Zero revealed how he finessed Adidas into paying him his infamous $40,000,0000 deal. Gil’s history with Adidas goes back to his childhood.

Arenas was “an Adidas kid growing up”, he was also a part of their Pumps Brother program. Though Gil wasn’t among the star kids of the program, he still managed to reach the NBA, making it in as the 31st pick of the 2001 draft.

But when it came time for Adidas to pay Gil, they weren’t too enthusiastic. Arenas wasn’t even offered a $2 million deal. The reason for Adidas’s behavior, well according to the Germans, was that Arenas wasn’t a star and thus didn’t deserve star money.

Soon after the meeting, Agent Zero started hunting his contemporaries on the court, all the while eyeing an All-Star spot. To Arenas, a starting spot in the All-Star game is all he needed to achieve his dream of financial freedom. Arenas soon realized that the All-Star game was a popularity contest, and if he wanted ‘in’, he had to do something ‘loud’.

What happened next was something for the history books. Gilbert Arenas would turn into ” The Hibachi”, destroying every coach who didn’t select him as an All-Star. Gil became famous for his antics on the court, talking trash to the likes of LeBron and Kobe Bryant.

Arenas would decide to top off all his antics with a 2.5-million-dollar birthday party. Recalling the incident, Gilbert told his interviewer,

“so I bought LA, New York, Miami to DC. It was a big who’s who of everything. And what ended up happening was that because of the party, everyone is talking about it, voting to kick in, and Adidas is running a Vote for Gilbert Campaign…..I was probably 400,000-500,000 votes away from Vince Carter, I beat him by 100,000.”

Arenas also revealed the expenses he had to incur for throwing that birthday party,

“I spent a million dollars just on the hotel…two hotels, and then I did a deal with jetblue to make jetblue private.”

Very much like Gilbert predicted, Adidas came knocking once the Agent Zero phenomenon hit. But surprisingly enough, Arenas had already made up his mind, that no matter what Adidas offered, he would leave the meeting instantly, acting like the offer was disrespectful. This little maneuver from Agent Zero led to Adidas changing their initial offer of 5 years/$15 million, to that of 5 years/ $40 million.

Gil loses his contract due to a gun incident

After a certain point, acting like a ‘tough dude’ can have its repercussions, and that’s exactly what happened to Gilbert Arenas. Back in 2010, Gilbert Arenas got charged with a felony, after he brought an unregistered firearm into the Verizon Centre, after having a verbal altercation with teammate Javaris Crittenton.

Gilbert was immediately suspended by the NBA indefinitely with no pay. But not only did Agent Zero lose his NBA money, he even lost out on his remaining contract with Adidas.

A clause in Gil’s Adidas contract, allowed Germany to exit their deal with the Wizards star early. But Gilbert did accept responsibility for the contract being taken from him, as he told VladTV,

“It was stupidity on my part by taking the felony deal…that’s what got my contract taken.”

In the end, Gilbert might be one of the luckiest NBA players ever, as he even got paid $111,000,000 by the Wizards, after which he only played 55 games for them. In hindsight, Arenas made way more money than he lost, and he doesn’t seem to have a problem with the media making his contract with the Wizards, one of the worst deals in sports history.