Forbes Wins The Race To Declare NBA Players "Thugs"

And there it is, right on time. "Many NBA players carry guns and the league is full of thugs," according to something called Michael Ozanian, national editor at Forbes, of all places.

Ozanian thinks — well, I'm not exactly sure what he thinks, except that it involves the Arenas-Crittenton showdown and how it will surely undermine David Stern's top-secret plans to launch 50 coups across the land and overthrow all our state legislatures and legalize gambling everywhere. I'll just post the whole item here, since it manages to be wrong about pretty much everything:

National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern would love to bring legalized gambling throughout the country to the league. He has wanted to do this for quite a while but lately has been making more noise than usual about his quest. Who could blame Stern? Legalized gambling would pave the way for an expansion franchise in Las Vegas that would go for a record amount (around $500 million) and bring a lot of money to team owners at a time when many of them are losing money. All Stern has to do is convince the politicos in D.C. that he has a handle on his league. Normally, even the whores in Washington would not bring themselves to such a low level, especially with the NBA's referee betting scandal still lingering in the tabloids. But with the country's debts rising even faster than President Obama's poll ratings are sinking, Stern knew this was an opportune time to get D.C. to play ball. After all, legalized gambling means a lot more tax revenue for Washington, and don't think for a moment the other professional leagues would not be watching closely.

But news of an alleged gun duel between two players on the Washington Wizards could kill Stern's vision. Thanks to a New York Post Article, the league reportedly found out that on December 21 Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton drew guns on each other over gambling debt in the team's locker room at the Verizon Center which, with more than a taste of irony, is in Washington, D.C. Many NBA players carry guns and the league is full of thugs. But most fans and sponsors don't care, and for those that do care the NBA has done a wonderful job keeping its dirty laundry out of the press. But this fiasco will be hard for Stern to explain, especially if he goes to testify before congress on how wholesome his league is.

So, not content to be both wrong about David Stern's supposedly raging hard-on for legalized gambling and clueless about the basics of federalism, Ozanian also absentmindedly throws in everyone's favorite bit of coded language about the NBA: It's populated by a bunch of gun-toting "thugs." Of course, there are gun-toting thugs in all walks of American life. The publisher of Ozanian's shitty magazine knows a thing or two about that.

NBA Gun Debacle Could Kill Stern's Gambling Quest [Forbes]