Houston Rockets Media Session
I welcome everyone here today to the brand new Toyota Center. The Summit was a great home and the memories there will never be forgotten. However, the Toyota Center will bring this organization to another level. I also want to thank Rudy Tomjanovich for his time in the Rockets organization. He will always be remembered for his time as a player and championship coach. I wish him well in his recovery and will always be a great find. I also want to thank Cal Bowdler and Tyrone Nesby for their two years here. They worked very hard and always produced when needed. I wish them both well.
We are very excited at this time. We've hired new head coach Jeff Van Gundy. He's a proven winner and promises to help the team give a lot of effort defensively and play with sound fundamentals. He bring alot of credibility to the organization and we are excited to have him.
We are also excited with the team we have assembled. We feel we have really good players top to bottom and have a young nucleus to compete with for a long time. We are very happy with the drafting of Carmelo Anthony. He will give us more scoring and along with Wally Szczerbiak will help strengthen the SF position. He is also a player who can provide offense when needed. We're also happy with the resigning of C Brad Miller. He's been a very good player for us whether starting or coming off the bench. He's only going to get better and with Bryant Reeves, gives us one of the best center duos in the league. Our PF spot is especially deep with Etan Thomas, Drew Gooden, and 2nd round pick Sofoklis Schortnitis. The SG position is strong with Manu Ginobili and Voshon Lenard and our PG position is in great hands with Damon Stoudamire and Speedy Claxton.
We feel our current roster has a chance to build into a strong team for a long time. We have depth at every position. We have guys on our two deep depth chart who can start in this league. Our young guys are expected to improve every day and if not, we have other guys who ready for an opportunity. We believe Jeff Van Gundy will get the most out of these players and nothing will be guaranteed to them. Training camp will be exciting because every spot is up for grabs. You're only as good as your last practice. Any questions?
Houston Rockets Media Session
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AD23forMVP
About 8 games into the season Manu has slightly more than doubled his scoring output from last season as well as shooting about 5 percentage points better. Do you expect him to keep up this run or will he come back down a bit?
I expect him to keep it up. His inside and outside scoring improved in training camp. He also improved his defense and he's getting more steals and scoring in transition. Plus playing next to Carmelo and Damon has opened up the floor for him. We expected bigger things from him this season.