Dallas Mavericks Press Conference

Hi everyone, thanks for coming. So as you know the season gets underway tonight. We are very excited as I' sure all of you are as well. I'll go threw a couple of things and then I'll turn it over to you guys.

**So first I want to wish Larry Hughes the absolute best in Utah. He was a stand up guy and always a professional.

http://youtu.be/1rwu20Enr18
Farewell Larry...

**Not sure if the Larry Hughes deal came as a shock to anyone but we at one point were actively shopping him. Then we stopped due to lack of interest. We actually had decided to keep Larry through the remainder of his contract. Then Utah came out of nowhere with an offer that we couldn't pass up. The goal is still to get younger and continue to improve.

To fill that hole at the guard position we went out and got veteran Cuttino Mobley and feel he will fit in well here. His experience and leadership will help Deron and Danny as well. We did have a list of players we wanted to fill that hole. We did go after Mike Miller. But Mike told us that he hates money and that he'd rather play for a worse team. Sooooo, after that we put all our efforts into Cuttino. We also signed Jason Hart to back up Deron.

Our expectations this season are a bit tempered. We went thru training camp and most of the results were very promising. We actually had something happen we were not expecting. We had penciled in Beans as our starter early on. It's been our plan for him from the beginning, but Big Jake had other plans. He improved so much during the offseason and training camp that he gave us no choice but to go with him as our starter. Beans will see time as his main backup and of course he'll see time at the 4 as well.

Let me say this, we are VERY excited about our frontcourt. I know there is so much other frountcourt buzz around the league, but we definitely think our frontcourt has been severely overlooked and we plan on making teams pay for that.

Everyone on the team pretty much improved in some way. Although Deron did improve his ball handing, he had some bumps in the road this summer. But we are totally confident that he will work hard and get to where he wants to be and we know he can be. And that's playing at a very high level. Deron is a very proud and confident person. He feels like he is just as good as the guy who went #1. Only time will tell that but that's what we like about Deron. He's a hard worker and very dedicated to improving everyday.

As far as who will be getting the touches on this team, well this will of course be a work in progress being so much has changed since last year. But we will definitely be getting Kenyon lots of touches, as well as Cuttino and Danny. We want Deron to focus on mainly being a distributor. We have a lot of guys who can score unlike last year.

So I'll wrap it up there. We all think the future here in Dallas is a very bright one and are looking forward to the first game(s) of the season tonight. Thank all of you for being here and if you have any questions feel free to ask away!