Washington Wizards President of Basketball Operations Ernie Grunfeld announced today that the team has signed guard/forward Caron Butler to a contract extension.  Per team policy, terms of the extension were not announced.  

?We are pleased that we were able to come to an agreement in extending Caron?s contract,? said Grunfeld.  ?Caron is a proven NBA player and will be a very solid part of our core moving forward.  He is versatile, very tough and an outstanding competitor.  Caron places winning before everything else and we really like that about him.?

?I am very grateful and happy to be a part of the Washington Wizards organization,? said Butler.  ?This city, the organization, my teammates and my coaches have embraced me since I arrived here.  We have great team chemistry, and I know a good thing when I see it.  This is a great situation for me.  This offense suits my game perfectly, and I feel as though this is the perfect situation for me to prosper.?

Washington Wizards President of Basketball Operations Ernie Grunfeld announced today that the team has released forward Hiram Fuller and guard Billy Thomas.

Fuller appeared in six preseason games with Washington and averaged 3.2 points and 3.0 rebounds in 12.8 minutes per game.

Thomas also appeared in six preseason games for the Wizards and averaged 4.8 points and 1.5 rebounds in 14.0 minutes per game.

Washington Wizards President of Basketball Operations Ernie Grunfeld announced today that the team has exercised their fourth-year option on guard/forward Jarvis Hayes.

?Jarvis is a big part of the core that we?ve built here, and we?re looking forward to watching him continue to grow as a player and as a professional,? said Grunfeld.  ?He?s a versatile player with a good feel for the game, nice touch on his jump shot, and explosive athletic ability. We think he?s a nice fit for what we?re doing here.?  

In 124 career games over two seasons with the Wizards, Hayes has averaged 9.9 points and 4.0 rebounds in 28.9 minutes per game.  An All-Rookie Second Team selection in 2004, Hayes was selected by the Wizards with the 10th overall pick in the first round of the 2003 NBA Draft.

The Wizards lost two starters in the third quarter in Friday  night's game against the Denver Nuggets when Antawn Jamison injured his right shoulder and Gilbert Arenas was poked in the right eye.

Arenas missed seven of his first nine shots and finished with eight points in nine minutes, after scoring 24 in Thursday's overtime win over Charlotte. Jamison had seven points and four assists in 16 minutes.

Michael Jordan believes that the Washington Wizards "used" him and said he never would have returned to basketball in 2001 if he had known that owner Abe Pollin wasn't going to allow him to return to his position as team president.

In an interview with "60 Minutes," which will air Sunday on CBS, Jordan said that getting fired was an especially painful experience considering the moves he made to make the Wizards profitable. "I didn't have to" come back, Jordan said. "But I did it with the benefit of trying to help an organization to get back on their feet. And the gratitude that was given? It was, 'Your service is no longer wanted or needed.' So I felt like I was used in a sense."

There will come a moment before tonight's preseason game between the Washington Wizards and Los Angeles Lakers in Bakersfield, Calif., when Gilbert Arenas and Kwame Brown cross paths, make eye contact and, perhaps, address one another.

Brown, who was traded to the Lakers this summer for Chucky Atkins and Caron Butler, will be in the starting lineup for Los Angeles while Arenas will be back on the court for Washington after missing the last two games with groin and hamstring soreness.

How will Arenas react to seeing Brown for the first time since Brown was traded to the Lakers in August?

"Who?" Arenas asked. "Number 54. Oh, he's not at my position so I don't really care. That's the Lakers' decision. That doesn't really have anything to do with me."

"This ain't no Kobe-Shaq thing," Arenas continued. "It'll be a handshake. 'Hey what's up? How are you doing? Let's play.' "

Brown recently said that he skipped practice during the playoffs last spring -- and earned a suspension -- because he wanted to avoid physically harming Arenas. According to Brown, Arenas had told Wizards Coach Eddie Jordan not to play Brown.

Brown, however, struck a conciliatory tone when asked about Arenas on Sunday.

"No ill will," Brown told reporters in Los Angeles. "I'll go shake [Arenas's] hand. I'll go shake the whole team's hand. Regardless of how some of the players might feel about me or I feel about him, we're professionals."

The Washington Wizards' Antonio Daniels was held out of Saturday night's 104-79 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies because of a sprained ankle he suffered in practice Friday.

That sprain, which he described as mild, has been about the only thing that has slowed Daniels, whose attacking, relentless play earned him several floor burns as well as 25 free throw attempts in the first two exhibition games against Cleveland and San Antonio.

When the Wizards signed Daniels in the offseason, they knew they were getting a playoff veteran who can play and defend either guard position. They also knew they were getting a pit bull with the ability to play fast without playing sloppy.

"The thing I really like is that he's aggressive, but he also takes care of the basketball," Wizards Coach Eddie Jordan said. "The last two years he's been very high in assist-to-turnover ratio. When you can attack like he can and you don't turn the ball over and you make the right decisions, that's a real plus for us."

It was not ?HUUUUGHES? they were yelling.

Former Wizard and current Cleveland Cavalier Larry Hughes returned to Washington amid a chorus of boos Monday night in the preseason opener for both teams.

He was booed when the starting lineups were introduced. He was booed when he went to the free throw line. He was booed each time he touched the ball.

Hardly a triumphant return for Hughes, one of Washington?s ?Big Three? last season along with Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison that helped the franchise end an eight-year postseason drought and win its first playoff series win since 1982.

Hughes entered this past offseason as a free agent with both he and the Wizards publicly claiming their intent on reaching a new deal. But Hughes ultimately signed a five-year contract with Cleveland worth nearly $70 million.

Cleveland prevailed Monday, 116-94, but the 12,106 in attendance at MCI Center seemed more concerned with chastising Hughes than the outcome, understandable for a preseason game.

?A lot of those fans that were booing me wanted me to come back,? said Hughes, who posted career highs in points (22.0), rebounds (6.3), assists (4.7) and steals (NBA-high 2.89) last season with the Wizards. ?So I understand it.?

Hughes joined third-year star LeBron James in Cleveland and the two showed flashes Monday of developing the chemistry Hughes and Arenas became known for.

?It?s a business and you?ve go to do what you do,? Arenas said. ?If [Hughes] feels that?s the best fit for him than that?s his choice. I support him 100 percent and he?s still one my best friends in the league.?

Not long after saying he had wanted to slap Gilbert Arenas, Kwame Brown gave him a call instead.

Arenas said he got a phone call Sunday night from Brown, who offered an explanation for inflammatory comments that appeared in Sunday's Washington Post.

"He called me and said everything was misconstrued, and I accepted it," Arenas said Monday at the Washington Wizards' media day.

Brown, now with the Los Angeles Lakers, burned his Wizards bridges several times over in the Post interview, but his most severe accusation was aimed at Arenas. Brown told the paper that Arenas was to blame for Brown getting little playing time in Game 3 of the second-round playoff series against the Chicago Bulls.

The next day, Brown called in sick and missed practice. One day later, he was suspended for the rest of the playoffs.

"The thing is, the whole thing stems from Gilbert telling them not to put me in the game. I didn't come to practice because I was going to be a distraction. I was going to slap ? him," Brown told the Post. "I'll admit it, what I did was wrong -- not showing up was wrong -- but I ain't saying what I would've done if I showed up would've been right. Being that I didn't show up I didn't put my hands on nobody. How a teammate, a supposed friend, would go to a coach and tell him don't put me in a game, I would've done something seriously wrong to him."

Arenas and coach Eddie Jordan both denied that Arenas had any influence on Brown's playing time in Game 3. At the end of the season, the Wizards traded Brown and Laron Profit to the Lakers for Caron Butler and Chucky Atkins, ending a disappointing four-year tenure in Washington for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2001 draft.

Arenas said that he supported Brown during the playoffs and even called on Wizards fans to stop booing Brown and boo the opponents instead.

"I was the one who was helping him out," Arenas said. "But I guess he heard from somebody that I told Coach not to play him in Game 3. It wasn't like that."

Kwame Brown told The Washington Post that he wasn't ill after Game 3 of the Wizards' series with the Bulls, as the team reported, but was so upset with guard Gilbert Arenas, he feared he would have attacked the guard.

"The thing is, the whole thing stems from Gilbert telling them not to put me in the game. I didn't come to practice because I was going to be a distraction. I was going to slap the [expletive] out of him," Brown told the paper. "I'll admit it, what I did was wrong -- not showing up was wrong -- but I ain't saying what I would've done if I showed up would've been right. Being that I didn't show up I didn't put my hands on nobody. How a teammate, a supposed friend, would go to a coach and tell him don't put me in a game, I would've done something seriously wrong to him."

When told of Brown's accusation, Arenas denied his former teammate's recollection.

"That's the coach's decision. I'm not the coach. I'm not the GM," Arenas told the paper. "If he feels I have that much pull that I could pull him in and out of the game, then I guess he would blame me. If that's his excuse for missing practices -- to blame me -- then I'm strong enough to take the responsibility. But I never told Coach to put him out the game."