The Story of 0

Arenas was short and skinny as a young teen, unable to crack 5-foot-8 until high school. He would show up at popular summer basketball camps such as Southern California's annual Pump-N-Run as a virtual unknown among 200 larger, taller kids, many of whom were being recruited by prestigious area high schools. "No one ever knew who I was, but I still ended up making the camp all-star team," Arenas recalls.

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His first genuine slight in basketball came his freshman year while failing to start on the junior varsity at well-regarded Birmingham High School in Van Nuys. Al Bennett, the school's longtime varsity coach, made it clear to Arenas and his father that Gilbert would never play for him, Arenas says, and that he simply did not have the tools to play in a highly disciplined offense. Bennett doesn't recall any such conversation, but he acknowledges feeling that Gilbert would play more at another school. Within months, Gilbert Sr. moved to a new district, and Gilbert transferred to Grant High School in Burbank to play for Levine.

In an offense Levine built around him as point guard, Arenas averaged 22 points his sophomore season, 29 his junior season and more than 32 points per game his senior season. One spectacular game in February 1998, during his junior year, catapulted Arenas into conversations regarding the best high school players in the United States.

Against Crenshaw, a national power, he scored 42 points on a buffet of pillowy jump shots and improvisational layups. He used Crenshaw's players as traffic cones. As Levine remembered, fans at the game were screaming in wonder every time Arenas scored, even though Grant lost by 39 points.

In another game as a junior, Arenas scored 46 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and had 10 steals and 14 assists -- in basketball parlance, a quadruple-double.

But none of the numbers do the DVDs justice. A bashful, 17-year-old kid in braces fills up the screen, in utter awe of the Los Angeles sportscaster interviewing him. The words overlay amateur video of a Grant High game. In one sequence, Arenas, rather than actually coming down with a defensive rebound, pirouettes in midair and swats the ball past half court to a streaking teammate. But the other kid blows the layup.

Suddenly, a figure comes into the camera frame, rising up over three opposing players, throwing the ball down with two hands. Arenas had covered the length of the floor, dunking back a miss he had rebounded on the other end of the court.

Levine's days as Arenas's mentor were coming to an end. "I knew I was done with Gilbert when he finally beat me in free throws," the coach said. "We shot 100 one day. I really got into an incredible rhythm, you know, just flowing. I [made] 96. Gilbert went for 98."

AMONG THE COLLEGE BASKETBALL POWERS IN HIS OWN BACK YARD, neither UCLA nor USC seriously recruited Arenas, which stung the young star. He attended summer school between his junior and senior years to make sure he would be academically eligible for an NCAA Division I program. But that meant he missed most of the elite summer camps for prep basketball talent, including the Adidas camp in New Jersey and the Nike camp in Indianapolis, where the country's top high school players are evaluated.

Arizona became interested in Arenas only after Coach Lute Olson was spurned by two high-profile recruits. The previous season, Olson had started Ruben Douglas, a freshman point guard, also from Burbank, who appeared to have locked up the position for the foreseeable future.

When Arenas accepted, coaches at other schools questioned his decision to sign with the Wildcats, who three years earlier had won the national championship. "They told him he would play zero minutes for me," Olson says.

The perception that he would sit on the bench at Arizona became a powerful motivation for Arenas. He ditched the No. 25 he had worn in high school in favor of 0. The zero-to-hero theme was born.