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."