Were Arenas' Fingers Unloaded, Too?

PHILADELPHIA -- In his latest effort to joke around with his teammates, Gilbert Arenas got roughly the same result as the previous ones: sending the wrong message all across the country. As he and the Wizards warmed up before their game against the Philadelphia 76ers at Wachovia Center, the players circled Arenas, who pointed his index fingers at them as if they were guns.

The image was caught on camera, and the photo -- of Arenas' fingers cocked, a grin on his face and on the faces of the other Wizards around him -- was plastered all over the Internet by halftime. Afterward, he and the players acknowledged that they were doing a take-off on a touchdown celebration from the movie Any Given Sunday, in which a player sprayed his teammates with pretend gunfire as they all fell back in a circle.

Update: David Stern Suspends Arenas Indefinitely

"They asked me to do it,'' Arenas said.

After meeting with reporters after the game, Arenas appeared to show remorse on Twitter. "I know everybody seen the pre game pics..my teammate thought to break the tention we should do that..but this is gettn way to much," he wrote, adding a few minutes later, "I wanna say sorry if I pissed any body off by us havin fun...I'm sorry for anything u need to blame for for right now."

However, giving in to them ran the risk of again leaving the impression that Arenas is not taking seriously enough -- or at all -- his troubles with the law over bringing four unloaded guns into the Verizon Center locker room last month. His Twitter postings in recent days have been devoid of previous joking references to the incident with Javaris Crittenton; on Saturday, he referred to himself as a "goofball'' while defending himself against the stories emerging about the incident. On Monday, after meeting with investigators from federal and local investigators, he issued a statement that, in part, admitted that he made "a misguided effort to play a joke on a teammate.''