If you had to pick someone to write the book on Gilbert Arenas, Mike Wise of the Washington Post is now officially the front-runner.

A fat chunk of the work is already done, in fact, and was published in yesterday's Washington Post magazine.

Wise introduces us to the teenager who would do anything (that scar on his forehead is because his friends wanted to see him to a backflip off a building into a slightly-too-distant pool) to please people.

He walks us once again through the misery of a toddler abandoned in a crack house, and scooped up by a would-be actor of a father. And we learn that Arenas and Bruce Bowen -- who were both reportedly abandoned by their mothers -- have talked about the fact they were moved by the movie "Antwone Fisher."

We see someone who has convinced himself he is an underdog again and again, and has fought and fought to prove everybody wrong to get the adulation he so craves.

Then Wise takes us places we have never been before -- with a pretty darned real peek at Arenas today. 

Wise shows us the Arenas who struggles to let people get all that close -- his inner circle is extremely small. And there is the question of his companion and their children. Wise explains:

Gilbert Sr. says there was a time "when I thought I lost my son to the world." It happened soon after Gilbert left Golden State for Washington, and Gilbert Sr. noticed a gaggle of friends suddenly interested in his newly minted $65 million son.

"There was a lot of people who got in his ear about certain things, how life should be," he says. "I didn't want to be part of it. I didn't want to be in the posse. At some point, I just figured you got to leave the nest to progress."

Today, those temporary friends are gone, and Arenas and his father speak often. "It's all love between me and Gil. I had a very different relationship with my father, so I'm thankful for what we have -- especially because he's now a father."

Alijah Amani Arenas was born in mid-March in Oakland. The boy was Arenas's second child with Laura Govan, who gave birth to Izela Semaya in December 2005. Their relationship has been tumultuous in the seven years since they started dating, but Arenas recently moved Govan and the children into his home. Which, given the couple's history, is major progress. After Izela was born, Govan hired an aggressive lawyer -- who threatened to serve Arenas with a paternity suit on national television during a Wizards game at Sacramento in March 2006 -- before cooler heads prevailed. Arenas says he never thought of anything but providing for Izela once he was certain he was her father.

"It's something you always want, but you always think, 'Man, I hope I can be a great dad to him like my dad was to me.'" He says he realizes his mother leaving has affected his life and relationships to some extent.

"I could have been against the world, 'Oh, my mom left me,' and blamed everything on that. But I'm not like that."

Wise is talking about Arenas on the Post website at noon eastern today.

(Thanks to Jamie for the heads up.)