Peter Vecsey Goes Ballistic on Arenas Coverage

When Peter Vecsey goes off, he makes sure you hear the bang. The New York Post curmudgeon, recently admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame (without a ticket!), used his Tuesday column to (figuratively) pistol whip reporters and columnists for their treatment of the Gilbert Arenas-Javaris Crittenton incident. Vecsey was one of the first reporters on the case back in late December, and received a healthy dose of scorn for his apparent overinflation of the locker room drama.

Of course, it wouldn't be Vecsey if he weren't peppering the interior of his own glass house while popping off about everyone else. Vecsey manages to -- with a straight face, no doubt -- take full credit for breaking the story while lambasting Washington Post columnist Mike Wise for misstating a key fact ... despite the fact that in "breaking the story" Vecsey himself appears to have misstated a key fact.

Wise reported earlier this month that in the course of the Dec. 21 incident inside the Verizon Center, Crittenton chambered a round while spatting with Arenas. In yesterday's plea, it was insisted that Crittenton's gun remained unloaded the entire time. So clearly there's a disconnect between Wise's report and the final verdict from the legal system. Vecsey relishes this miscue, spinning a yarn about the one time Vecsey beat Wise on the Latrell Sprewell-P.J. Carlesimo story, and how Wise commended Vecsey on his work ... only to be stung by a zippy Vecsey one-liner. (Seriously, Vecsey takes pride in having been a complete jerk to Wise a decade ago. It's amazing, the camaraderie and compassion in this man.)

What Vecsey doesn't address in today's rebel yell is that he was wrong, too. In that Jan. 1 report, Vecsey and co-writer David K. Li reported breathlessly that Gil and Javaris "drew guns on each other." Arenas's plea, the government's proffer of facts ... nothing has said Gil ever "drew" on Crittenton. As Mike Prada of Bullets Forever opines, calling out "you're more wrong than me!" isn't really the zenith of journalism. (The Washington Post's Dan Steinberg notes that Vecsey and Li also whiffed on the correct date of the incident, the tenor of the drama, and the reason for the whole shebang.)

And, if I may, the bugger that really irritates in Vecsey's piece is this slam on non-print writers:

Think any of those dot-com tools would have any clue today about what happened Dec. 21 if The Post hadn't stopped the presses?

Actually, Pete, Ken Berger of CBSSports.com broke the initial Arenas gun story, reporting on Christmas Eve that authorities were investigation the presence of firearms in Gil's Verizon Center locker. And on New Year's, when Vecsey's explosive stand-off story came out, Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski beat The Post by an hour ... without misstating any of the facts. And, of course, CBSSports.com and Yahoo.com aren't available at newsstands.

We would have found out about Gil vs. Javaris if not for Vecsey. The only difference is that we wouldn't have believed the overblown, strictly anti-Gil version Vecsey spun had someone more responsible (like Woj) beamed the story straight into the headlines.