Boston Celtics 2005 Pre-Season Press Conference
GM Danny Ainge: I'd like to welcome everyone it's been an exciting and stressful offseason and I'm glad that it's over. There is still plenty of Free Agents to be signed, but I'm happy to announce the Boston Celtics 2005 team is complete and we will not be pursuing anymore players. This is because we are happy with how the roster rounded out, and mostly because I was informed by our owner we are out of money.
Before I introduce our "big" off-season acquisition, I'd like to thank Baron Davis and Greg Ostertag for their time in Boston. Greg won a championship with us and is a true professional. Baron was our first big Free Agent signing gave us everything we asked for, we are sad to see them both go. With that I'll let Doc introduce Shaquille O'Neal
http://sportsofboston.com/wp-content...aq_celtics.jpg
Doc Rivers: I'm very excited to introduce Shaq as one of the newest members of the Boston Celtics. Shaq has been one of the most dominating players the simNBA has ever seen. With Chris now also resigned we feel that we have the most intimidating front court in the league. We plan on continuing our defensive dominance, being the #1 rebounding team, and as always winning an NBA championship. I think it goes without saying we plan on doing this by pounding the ball inside and daring teams to either double Chris or Shaq or play them man to man. I'll turn it back over to Danny to talk about Chris resigning and the arrival of Sam Cassell
Danny Ainge: While Chris did give us a little bit of a scare, we were confident we would resign him. We had made the decision well before we even traded for Shaq that we would give Chris whatever it took to get him to retire a Celtic. He has earned his contract and we are confident he will continue to be worth every penny. Once we traded for Shaq we felt even stronger about resigning Chris.
We are also happy to introduce Sam Cassell who signed the MLE to be the starting point guard. We were ecstatic when we learned that Sam would be joining us. Jamaal has been in the system for 4 years now and knows it well and is more than capable of starting, but will continue his role in the backup spot, something he excels at. Sam brings that veteran savvy that will be invaluable at the PG spot. Chris is our leader, but Sam will be the one with the ball in his hands in a distributing role.
I'll open it up for any questions