It's late, so I'm just going to combine two links into one and let you all comment before commenting further.
First, it appears that Arenas is going to accept a plea agreement that allows him to get off with much less than the maximum five-year sentence for the felony he was charged with today. Via the Washington Post:
Gilbert Arenas was charged Thursday with a single count of carrying a pistol without a license, a felony that carries a five-year sentence, but the Washington Wizards guard has reached a plea agreement that could result in much less or even no jail time, several sources close to the case said.
Basketball-wise, though, the issue of far greater importance is Arenas' future with the team. On that count, don't get your hopes up. Michael Lee and Mike Wise write tonight that Arenas feels betrayed by the organization, feeling they didn't support him during this time.
A person close to Arenas said Thursday that Arenas believes President Ernie Grunfeld and the Wizards management failed to support him following his locker room confrontation on Dec. 21 with teammate Javaris Crittenton. The two players were feuding over a gambling debt stemming from a card game on a team flight back to Washington from Phoenix two days earlier.
Arenas, the person close to the player said, has told NBA investigators that his flippant behavior following the incident, including the pantomiming of pistols before a game that led to an indefinite suspension from NBA Commissioner David Stern, was because he felt the Wizards organization had turned its back on him.
"If your own franchise, the people you considered family, weren't there for you when you needed them most, would you want to play for them and be around them anymore?" said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Arenas "was wrong for bringing guns into the locker room, and it's going to mean pleading guilty to a felony. It's serious business. But the way this came out and how Ernie and the organization handled the facts makes you wonder if he will ever play for them again."
There's more in there, including a line about how Arenas got emotional when he told NBA investigators that he didn't feel the team supported him after he made a mistake. Also, one player told Michael Lee (presumably, since he's in Chicago now) that none of this will matter because the whole team's being traded anyway. Nobody said the purging of this squad was going to be easy.
Back to Arenas, though. I understand that this is a remarkably complex issue, and the Wizards were kind of in a no-win situation. I also realize there's a legitimate argument to be made that Arenas deserves no sympathy at all. But Arenas' thoughts kind of confirm what many of us have said this week, which is that the manner in which the Wizards went about this merited questioning. Nobody said they needed to continue to push Arenas as the face of the franchise, but the way they did literally everything they could to distance themselves made any sort of reconciliation impossible. Now, the Wizards are in a position where they better hope the contract can be voided, because Arenas isn't coming back and nobody's going to want to trade him. This is instead of keeping their options open in case things got settled relatively harmlessly (which is still a possibility).