Untold: Shooting Guards

What Is the Series About?

Untold: Shooting Guards is a Netflix documentary that examines one of the most notorious scandals in NBA history: the December 2009 confrontation in which Washington Wizards teammates Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton brought loaded firearms into their team locker room over a gambling debt. Released on May 6, 2025, and directed by Walter Thompson-Hernandez, the film runs approximately 85 minutes and forms part of Netflix's ongoing Untold sports documentary franchise. It goes beyond the locker-room incident itself, tracing the devastating criminal consequences that unfolded over the following decade — most gravely, Crittenton's eventual conviction in a 2011 murder case.

The Case

The 2009 Locker-Room Incident

In December 2009 — sources place the confrontation on either December 21 or December 24 — Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton brought firearms into the Washington Wizards locker room in Washington, D.C. The dispute had its roots in a card game played during a team flight, which generated a gambling debt that quickly spiraled into a dangerous standoff between the two teammates. According to Netflix's own framing of the documentary, the film is an expose of how a gambling dispute led to guns drawn in an NBA locker room.

No shots were fired and no physical injuries to named individuals were recorded in connection with the locker-room confrontation itself. However, the reputational and legal fallout was immediate and severe. The NBA launched an investigation, and both players were suspended for the remainder of the 2009-10 season. Gilbert Arenas — then one of the league's marquee stars, a three-time NBA All-Star known for his prolific scoring with the Wizards — subsequently pleaded guilty to a felony gun charge in Washington, D.C. His career never recovered its prior trajectory.

Javaris Crittenton and the Murder of Julian Jones

If Arenas's story was one of a squandered superstar career, Crittenton's trajectory was far darker. In 2011, he became the subject of an entirely separate and far more serious criminal investigation in Atlanta, Georgia. Crittenton was charged in connection with the fatal shooting of Julian Jones, described in reporting as a young mother. Sources conflict slightly on Jones's age — one account describes her as 22 years old, another as a 27-year-old mother of four — and the available documentation does not fully resolve that discrepancy. What is established is that Jones was an innocent bystander killed by gunfire.

Crittenton ultimately pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter involving a weapon and aggravated assault with a firearm. He received an original sentence of 23 years, which was later reduced as part of his plea agreement. After serving his sentence, Crittenton was released from prison in April 2023, bringing a close — at least legally — to one of the most tragic career collapses in professional basketball history.

The documentary draws a direct thematic line between the 2009 locker-room incident and Crittenton's later crime, exploring how personal pressures and unresolved conflicts contributed to a chain of events with fatal consequences.

Production

Untold: Shooting Guards was directed by Walter Thompson-Hernandez, whose documentary work centers personal narrative and community context. The film features behind-the-scenes access to both Arenas and Crittenton, giving each man an opportunity to speak directly about the events of December 2009 and their aftermath. This level of access — particularly Crittenton's participation following his 2023 release — is noted by reviewers as a significant element of the documentary's value as a primary-source record.

The film is produced under the Netflix Untold banner, a franchise that has previously examined controversial and under-reported stories at the intersection of professional sports and crime. As a feature-length film rather than a multi-episode series, Untold: Shooting Guards delivers its narrative in a single approximately 85-minute runtime, maintaining a tight focus on the two central figures and the consequences of one escalating dispute.

The official Netflix trailer frames the documentary around themes of pride, loyalty, violence, and consequence — emphasizing that what began as a card-game disagreement ended in a murder conviction and years of incarceration.

Reception

Critical and audience response to Untold: Shooting Guards has focused heavily on the documentary's access to its central subjects and its willingness to follow the story past the headline version of events into Crittenton's prison sentence and eventual release. Sportskeeda's coverage and reviews on outlets including Decider and Yahoo Sports described the film as a compelling look at how a single incident of poor judgment in a professional sports locker room cascaded into life-altering criminality.

The documentary has been noted for the weight it gives to Crittenton's perspective — a voice rarely heard in coverage dominated by the more famous Arenas — as well as for revisiting the story of victim Julian Jones, whose life risks being overshadowed by the celebrity angle.

As of publication, a verified IMDb rating for the film has not been confirmed in available sources. The documentary does not appear to have generated significant controversy beyond ongoing factual discrepancies in some reporting around the exact date of the 2009 incident and details about Julian Jones.

The Case Today

Gilbert Arenas resolved his criminal case years ago and has remained a public figure in basketball media, appearing in podcasts, commentary, and now in this documentary. His felony conviction and suspension marked the effective end of his time as an elite NBA player, though he continued playing at a diminished level for several more seasons.

Javaris Crittenton, after serving the reduced version of his 23-year sentence, was released from prison in April 2023. His participation in Untold: Shooting Guards represents one of his most significant public appearances since his release. The documentary offers him a platform to reflect on a trajectory that took him from an NBA roster to a Georgia prison cell in under two years.

Julian Jones, the victim of the 2011 shooting, does not have a conviction to mark the end of her story — only the life that was ended. The documentary's attention to the full arc of Crittenton's criminality ensures that her death is not erased by the sports-scandal framing that dominated early coverage of both men's stories.

Untold: Shooting Guards is streaming now on Netflix.