Toronto Raptors Presser.

GM Soundwave:
Welcome everyone, good to see all the familiar faces in here. I'm sure you have plenty of questions and I am here to answer them as best as possible.

Let me begin by saying that this is a transition year for our team. We decided in the middle of last season that our goal would be to get younger and deeper. I am very happy with the results so far. We have changed our team philosophy from looking at the ratings to actually looking at the numbers on the court. We used to go strong for A defenders but now we are looking more for playmakers. Our new stats based system will hopefully allow us to find players that fit better together.

Now I would like to speak on the Grant Hill trade. Grant was a wonderful person to have in our locker room and did everything we ever asked of him. It was a very tough decision to let him go. We noticed a slight decline in his play last year and decided we did not want to break the bank and risk our future on a player of his age. It was a very slight decline but we did not want to sit a wait on a pattern to form. We noticed even more declines in Rasheed. We were hoping he would not be greedy in Free Agency, but after recieving his contract proposal, we decided it was best for us to part ways. Now he is free to smoke it up with Stro or whatever else he enjoys doing.

Those moves allowed us to lock in Andre Miller for the very long term. He is now our team leader and the future of the franchise. His play wasn't as good as Hill's or Sheed's, but we saw plenty of improvement in his short time here. Signing him was a bit of a crapshoot but we have the utmost faith in him. We are not in the business of acquiring good young players and letting them walk. He has proved us right so far in his offseason training.

Our other big signing this offseason was Kenyon Martin. He is not the prolific scorer that Sheed was, but his defensive #'s jump off the charts. Averaging 3.1 blocks per 36 is nothing to take for granted. If we can run a bit more those blocks could turn into easy points for us. We love his D and at only 27 he is still improving in rebounding and offensively. He will be backed up by Kris "what do you see, yeah a cool guy" Humphries. He is a player we loved in this past draft. We believe he will be the perfect backup at PF for us for years to come. Good, cheap backup 4's are very hard to find.

Now that we have gone over our big changes this season, any questions?

You turned down a 6 year 120 million dollar contract from Rasheed Wallace, but then signed Andre Miller to a 7 year 110 million dollar contract. Was age a main factor in this decision?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pelicans78

You turned down a 6 year 120 million dollar contract from Rasheed Wallace, but then signed Andre Miller to a 7 year 110 million dollar contract. Was age a main factor in this decision?

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GM Soundwave:
Without a doubt age was a factor. Cost was too. Andre is only 25 and a player we could foresee getting MVP accolades sometime in the future. His cost per year is still much lower than Sheed's would have been. We are not interested in giving out 6 year contracts to players over 30 and were able to replace Sheed with a player that rebounds better and defends much better while fouling less. We lose some scoring on the court, but we could not get it through Sheed's head that he was not a 3 point specialist. He just kept chucking from long range, and when we would switch to inside, he would foul out.

Andre, in his first two weeks this year, has put up a PER on par with anything Sheed and Hill ever gave us, and he has plenty of room to improve. His assist numbers are too low. He is a player that could lead the league in that category one day. We are hoping this was just a result of the lineup problems that head coach Tyler Durden had to play with the past two weeks. We will find out in the coming months. His 3 point shooting seems to be the same which is also an area we are hoping to see improvement. Training is an option, but we are hopeful these are problems that will be fixed without it. We want to see what happens when Andre is in more of a facilitator role and not our first option.

Bill Plaschke here from the L.A. Times. Your team is giving up 111 points per game. What do you plan to do to be able to stop teams at the other end. Andre 'the Multi-Millier dollar man' is known for his defense and you've stated you've felt that K-Mart is a better defender than the man he replaced Rasheed Wallace aka Walmart. Grant Hill was never known as a defender in years past, so what's with the drop off?

Also, often times it seems like your coach Tyler Durden has multiple personalities in terms of his line-ups. Have you given him the go-ahead to plug and play as much as he wants? There are also reports that he is enrolled at an addiction rehab facility, any comment?

GM Soundwave:
Yes, Tyler had another episode. But how could you ask if he is in rehab when he is obviously sitting right next to us?

Coach Durden:
This guy's obviously a *******. Let me handle it from here. "Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
As far as our Defense goes,
"I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may."

GM Soundwave:
Thank's coach, but I think I can handle this. 111 points per game is not acceptable. We will further evaluate things now that Coach Durden is ummmm better and thinking clearer. Our team went a bit bipolar after the last sim. Backups were starting, scoring options seemed backwards, and we have no idea what pace or press we were running. Hopefully now that Coach is on his new meds we can get some sense of normalcy and take it from there.

We have seen some very encouraging signs like Kenyon holding KG to only 23 points on 9 of 25 shooting while only fouling twice. Sheed used to foul out within 20 minutes every time we faced the Hornets. But we also have some issues like Chauncey going off against Miller.

It is hard to evaluate any further because of the mess our lineups were in but we are looking forward to getting this ship on the right path. Our team is young and growing pains are to be expected.