Need a good reason to cancel your Twitter account? Well, Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards basketball team may have about $111M reasons to do so.

Last Thursday, following his indefinite suspension from the National Basketball Association in the wake of a gun-related altercation with a teammate, Arenas canceled his Twitter account. His tweeting had factored somewhat into his suspension and, under his father’s advice, he canceled his account so as not to be tempted to make matters worse.

Arenas had originally issued an apology for the gun incident through his lawyer in the requisite save-face (and career) kind of way that we have all grown tired of hearing from athletes and celebrities. (Wasn’t it Tiger Woods just a few weeks ago?) But Arenas was simultaneously tweeting about the whole incident, mocking the legal outcry and making light of the incident in ways that were not so funny to NBA commissioner David Stern. Quotes from the tweets made the paper and commissioner Stern, who is extremely cognizant of the NBA’s image and its revenue producing (or reducing) power, got wind of it and was not amused. Arenas’s subsequent behavior included a front page photo of him mimicking shooting his fellow teammates with his fingers while being introduced before a game. This time he really got Stern’s attention.

Up to that point, Stern had been willing to reserve judgment until the authorities performed their formal investigation. Following Arenas’s antics, Stern decided that he was “not fit to be on a basketball court” and imposed the suspension. Stern saw it as the ultimate flagrant foul, and had a tweet of his own to deliver.

Of course, it wasn’t really the tweeting that got Gil into the mess he’s in. It was the act itself, not only the crime of bringing guns into Washington, DC but also into an NBA arena, which is considered a workplace and thus in violation of NBA policy even if guns had been legal in the city itself. But even if it is the incident itself that ultimately determines his fate, Gil’s wild west photo along with his tweets were every bit the reason Stern suspended him prior to the completion of the criminal investigation. He is now sitting at home, suspended without pay.

(Incidentally, the Wizards organization has since removed all signs and pictures of Arenas from the Verizon Center. I witnessed them remove the gigantic banner that was hanging outside the arena on 6th street, which ironically had the word “character” in the banner’s message. I was at the Georgetown game Saturday and couldn’t find a single picture of Arenas anywhere, at least not in the public’s view. The Pollin family, still owners of the team and the arena despite the recent death of longtime owner Abe Pollin (who must be turning over in his grave considering he changed the team’s name from “Bullets” to “Wizards” in an effort to be sensitive to gun violence), were also not amused by Gil’s antics.)

Other athletes and celebrities have taken to the whole tweeting craze, and most of it is harmless fun, but one wonders what their motives are and if there is more risk than reward, if any at all.

Earlier this fall, a Washington Redskins player over-tweeted by criticizing fans who had earlier booed the Redskins off the field following the Rams game, a (rare) Redskin victory, but one in which they played pathetically (foreshadowing the rest of the season) and deserved to lose. The player subsequently apologized, presumably from internal pressure from Redskins management, but the damage to the player’s image was done. Those tweets also made the papers. At least in that case, there were no legal or financial consequences for the player, only image damage control.

The point is, are we communicating way too much now? With all the technology at our disposal, from cell phones to instant messaging to texting to email to tweets to blogging to Skype to Facebook, are we really any better off? Or has all the communication become not only a virtual leash, often an invasion of privacy or at least our spare time, but also a new avenue for inadvertently exposing ourselves?

The Internet has made communication easier and more convenient than ever. Technology has provided the means to communicate simply and quickly not only with family, friends and colleagues but also to the masses via blogs and tweets. We can now network socially and re-connect with friends we lost touch with decades ago. We can video teleconference across continents in a Jetsons-like manner for free. We are constantly in contact and accessible through one means or another. With every technological advance, we seem to wonder how we lived so long without it.

But any technology can be abused, or at least used stupidly. Each of us has probably sent a rash email that we regretted about 1 second after we hit “send”. You may have been witness to the political damage someone does to themselves in the workplace with the inadvertent “reply all” containing words that were targeted to a more select audience. We have read stories of recruiters scouring Facebook and rejecting job applicants based on the photos and other data they find. We feel anxiety when we are without our mobile phones for five minutes yet we sometimes cringe when it rings at an inopportune moment, or we cringe when we are forced to listen to one side of someone’s phone call while on an elevator or the subway.

Despite the popularity of Twitter, I have wondered what we really intend to gain from these 140-character blurbs. More to the point, I wonder what celebrities intend to gain by sending such messages, especially if they are ill advised and off the cuff. Do they long for direct contact with their fans and the general public because they are fed up with the media taking their quotes out of context and slanting their message to fit whatever story they are writing? OK, fine, but that only works if your own internal editor does a better job.

Gilbert Arenas is in the second year of a 6-year $111M deal, with over $90M remaining on the contract. His suspension, to the tune of $147K per game, may just be the beginning of his troubles. In the wake of Michael Vick and Plaxico Burress (still in prison), it’s no joke. Arenas may face criminal charges, prison time, a long NBA suspension or lifetime ban from the league, and the voiding of the remaining value of his contract. At a minimum he can wave goodbye to his endorsements along with his image. (If Tiger Woods is losing endorsements following his marital infidelity, who besides Smith and Wesson might endorse Arenas?) Those punishments may be invoked regardless of Arenas’s post-incident antics, but his public tweeting certainly didn’t score him any points with authorities who often consider a person’s character when rendering judgment.

Politicians, professional athletes and other celebrities embarrassing themselves is nothing new. The list is long and distinguished. But such faux pas used to be contained to what the newspapers or television caught, often inadvertently, and often with plausible deniability due to questionable verification of the source. Now, technology has provided celebrities the ability to initiate public contact, to permanently set the record in their own words and, potentially, to shoot themselves in the proverbial foot (or in the knee as this case almost was.) It may seem entertaining, and perhaps for the most part that’s all it is. But when their livelihood and freedom are at stake, not to mention $111M, perhaps they should be more careful.

I can tell you that there is at least one (potentially former) NBA player who wishes he had been.