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Dan Steinberg of the D.C. Sports Bog on the mood among the Wizards, where player after player told him things were much more serious this year:

"The personality on the team is set with me and Antawn [Jamison] and Antonio Daniels; we're serious, down to business guys," Butler told me before he left. "It's grind time."

Serious? Business? Grind time? I was getting ready to put the Bog up for sale, until Butler talked me off the ledge.

"We'll still have fun stuff for you," he said. "Obviously. We'll give you something. Look at Nick's haircut, man."

Oh. Right. Team Grind Time's unquestioned star at practice today was Nick Young, the second-year man who, after losing a bet with Stevenson, had been forced to cut his emerging 'fro into something resembling...well....

"A damn rooster," Butler said. "I don't know what that is."