Dallas Mavs Press Conference

GM Chad Anthony

Good afternoon everyone! I want to thank everyone who made it out today and I will be answering a questions. First I do want to say a few things about how our offseason and the first couple of weeks of the season have went so far.

As you all know I inherited an absolute mess. This will be a slow climb to get to the top of this league. But that IS our destination. Believe it or not, 4 of the 5 current starters were NOT on this team when I took it over. I wanted to come in and put my fingerprint on this team. I made the Wizards deal, and brought in Tsak and Jamal Crawford. I think Jamal has a bright future in this league and has started the season off wonderfully. We then brought in Travis Knight. He and Jake have been mentoring Andris Biedrins, our first rounder, and hopefully he can take over that starting job in the near future. I'm sure you all know we went after Hedo pretty hard. Actually offered him a good bit more than what he signed with New Orleans for. When we lost out on him we signed Dan Langhi. He is producing pretty well and we hope he can keep this pace up.

Ask the critics. Ask the so-called "experts". Ask the analysts. The Dallas Mavericks are supposed to be BAD this year. Well we have a 5 game sample so far. It's not much but it's all we have. Were sitting above .500 and this team is shooting the ball better than ANY other team in the league. We have the 2nd best FG% and the best 3PT%. Were averaging the 4th most Points per Game. Now that being said, we're allowing our opponents to score a bit too much. We need to step up our defense. We are contesting shots well but it appears our opponents are getting too many possessions, too many attempts. I've discussed this with Coach and we'l get this worked out. We are a solid defensive team. I don't see why we can't improve on these first few weeks.

Now I'll take some questions

ASK AWAY!!!

What are some of things your team can improve on and is your club a viable .500 team?

Thanks for the question! I've been standing at this podium for nearly 20 hours just staring at all of you. Kinda creepy but whatever.

Before the season started I hoped we would be. Some people could have looked at this roster and just decided to pack it in for the year and enjoy the benefits of a nice lottery pick. But losing is not in my vocabulary. Now after seeing these guys in action...Yes I do think we are a legit .500 team which may get us into the playoffs. Who knows?

You'll see some MAJOR changes to our starting lineup already. I had high expectations for Biedrins and the minutes he's put in so far have been fantastic. He's a rebounding machine and a solid defender. Another reason he's now starting is that I'd like to have the youngest, freshest legs out there. We're going to try and run a very fast paced offense. Because the way this team is shooting, more shots will definitely be a good thing. We just have to focus on defense and committing less turnovers. The game we lost to Houston was just NOT acceptable. We had 20 turnovers as a team and simply didn't execute. Hats off to Houston, but next time it will be different!

Thanks again for the question!

Any more questions?????????????

Another question. The Rockets obtained the Mavs 1st round pick back in 2002 for Sam Cassell. The Rockets used the pick on Al Jefferson. If you would have had the pick, who would you have drafted and why?

Good question. Assuming we had no idea we would get our hands on Biedrins, I would have to say Jefferson would have been the pick. I mean this guy was averaging I believe over 40 points a game in his senior year. Sure it was high school, but that's still no small feat. Who wouldn't want this guy!? Luckily we still ended up with a big guy with lots of talent in Biedrins. But Houston definitely grabbed themselves a great player.