It's another day ending in y, so of course Gilbert Arenas is treating us all to His Opinions About Basketball. The podcast host is no stranger to xenophobic and inflammatory commentary, and this week he fired off a truly misogynistic, disgusting rant directed at Karl-Anthony Towns and the New York Knicks — a rant that caught the attention of the Fever's Brianna Turner, who described Arenas' comments as "deeply disturbing."
On Tuesday's episode of "Gil's Arena" the one-time NBA player (who never made it past the second round of playoffs) blasted Towns' "physical makeup." He continued, "Long legs, short torso, big a** feet. There’s nothing he can do, he’s built like a whole f*****g b***h. He’s built like a female. Am I saying something wrong? He’s built like a girl. He has girl hips. He’s like a full WNBA player."
There are a lot of places to start when picking apart everything that's wrong with this statement. Arenas' use of "b***h" to describe any woman, anywhere, for starters. The implication that being "built like a female" or "built like a girl" or "like a full WNBA player" is somehow a disadvantage, a problem, or a negative attribute is another. As Turner put it in a post shared on X, "Gilbert Arenas’s comments on KAT were so deeply rooted in misogyny."
"In his pathetic attempt to diminish & embarrass KAT, he simply compared him to a woman," she continued. "That is deeply disturbing. Guess I’m too woke or whatever but it’s hard to see a clip like that & think that’s justifiable."
Women are not secondary character to men
It's unclear what Arenas' real problems with Towns are, though it's likely the latter's success on the court has something to do with it (as noted today on Daily Knicks, Arenas was playing in China by the time he was 30; Towns is 29 and showing no signs of departing the league anytime soon), but it's genuinely horrifying that when struggling to comb his mind to find a way to insult Towns, Arenas struck upon comparing him to — gasp! — a woman, thought that insult was too extraordinary not to share, and then had the gall and the confidence to put that thought out there into the world, seemingly without any concern for how it might land, how it might reflect upon him, or how it might impact others.
It's 2025, guys. Women are not secondary characters to men. Women are not punching bags; it's never actually been an insult to say you throw like a girl, but in 2025 — in this age of women's sports dominating everything everywhere — it makes one look dumber than a bag of rocks when the biggest "insult" they can come up with is "oh, he looks like a girl."
Arenas, presumably, has women in his life who value his opinions and thoughts, or at the very least are subjected to them no matter what. It makes one wonder if it ever dawned on him that, at the very least, those same women might be troubled by his words, or if his animosity toward Towns blinded him to the fact that he lives in a world in which his words matter. Sure, like all of us, Arenas certainly has the right to share his opinions — but, like all of us, that doesn't make him immune to the consequences of doing so.
Though Arenas has adopted language to make himself appear to support women's sports from time to time, when he's allowed to let loose on his own stage, he's repeatedly made it clear that he doesn't seem to think that highly of women as actual people outside of how they relate to him — people who are on this planet to do a lot more than dress a certain way to "entice" male audiences or to just accept commentary like this from a man who can't have spent too much time actually diving into women's sports or interests.
Gilbert Arenas' comments are also a disservice to men
Arenas should be ashamed of himself, but it appears he probably isn't and won't be. And it's unlikely he'll contemplate the disservice he's also done to men by implying there's only one way for NBA players — and men in general — to exist on this planet, only one way for their bodies to be built, only one way for men to move in those same bodies. Men, like women, deserve much more than Arenas appears to have the ability to offer.
