How Agent Zero Saved D.C.

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The "impossible" tag fits Arenas like one of his kicks. His mother abandoned Arenas in a Miami housing project when he was almost 4. His father, then living in Tampa, retrieved him. Three years later, Gilbert Sr. drove with his son cross-country to chase an acting career in Los Angeles. The Gilberts were out of money on arrival. "I'm thinking, that's not cool," Gilbert Sr. remembers. For three days, they slept in Dad's Mazda RX-7. Arenas Sr. soon found steady work, although he never struck it big as an actor.

A dramatic scene unfolded four years ago, during Arenas' second season. As the Washington Post first reported, while Arenas was warming up for his former club, the Golden State Warriors, a woman shouted at him from the stands in Miami. "Gilbert! I'm your mom!" she declared. Arenas froze. After the game, Mary Francis Robinson gave him her phone number. He still hasn't called. "I used to look in the mirror, and all I wanted from God was to one day meet her," Arenas says. "He gave me that wish. That was it."

Although Arenas played high school ball in Los Angeles, backyard power UCLA didn't recruit him. So he dashed to the desert--the University of Arizona--where he took the number 0--in his mind, the number of minutes his doubters thought he would play as a freshman. After helping the Wildcats reach the NCAA championship game in 2001, Arenas watched every team bypass him in the first round of the NBA draft. He cried. "The teams in this league said no to Gilbert Arenas," says an amazed Dallas Mavericks general manager Donnie Nelson--whose team didn't have a first-round pick.

Arenas fuels himself on such insults. Last summer's Team U.S.A. snub offered fresh motivation. "It was predetermined," he says of the selection process: 14 players were flown to China, then Korea, for tournament tune-ups, although only 12 would make the World Championship roster. "They flew me all the way out there, and I thought I had a big shot. It was frustrating." Firing a dart at Team U.S.A. and Duke University coach Mike Krzyzewski, Arenas wrote on an nba.com blog, "I'll give up one NBA season to play against Duke." He swore to score 50 points against both the Phoenix Suns and the Portland Trail Blazers, whose head coaches, Mike D'Antoni and Nate McMillan, were Team U.S.A. assistants. He's halfway there, having dropped 54 on the Suns. The Blazers are on his calendar for Feb. 11.

Then Arenas will relish his trip to Las Vegas for the NBA All-Star Game, on Feb. 18. He has finally made the starting five. It's a chance for him to win over a global audience, and--surprise, surprise--his mind is firing from long range. "I'm trying to get two blimps," he says, smiling. "They'd just fly around the city and say, AGENT ZERO HAS ARRIVED." Let's hope he's just getting started.