Lakers Post-Season Press Conference

General Manager Mitch Kupcheck has finished his final interview with Dr. Buss after the season report and walks into the press conference. There are a large number of reports here with cameras flashing...

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Mitch Kupcheck: Good afternoon everyone, We have just concluded our internal exit interviews and I wanted to come out and first address the public, then I'll be happy to take questions after. First of all, this season was huge challenge for this franchise. The best way to describe what happened would be a roller coaster. When we initially built this team, we had the goal of rebuilding with younger guys but still being able to vie for a title. We had a really good point in which we won 10 straight games, but we just couldn't figure it out in time. In some degrees, this season had its successes and on others it was a profound failure. In short, we are very disappointed in the outcome of this season but are going to use this as a building point, not a point of failure.

Mitch Kupcheck: Starting the season we made some very impactful trades in acquiring Dirk and Marion for Shaq. At a certain point we decided we were not going to move forward in resign Marion this offseason; so we decided to get value for him. Unfortunately for us, Marion seemed to be that glue guy for our team. The reason I phrase it like that, is our team really fell apart once we let him go. But we are a franchise that only moves forward, so after today this topic will not be up for discussion.

Mitch Kupcheck: As for our future it's hard to say. We're still moving in that same direction on rebuilding a young team that can compete for years to come, but we may be replacing the core of that team. We have a fair amount of cap space and a lot of guys expiring this year. Outlaw, Pryzbilla, Mashburn, and most importantly Dirk. We do plan to engage dirk in extension talks as soon as the memorandum states we can and hope for him to be a cog in our line-up for years to come.


Mitch Kupcheck: I can now take questions. Please feel to ask.

Seems like your defense fell apart after the Marion trade. Why was that even though Marion mostly played the power forward? Was it due to Cassell's defense?

Mitch Kupcheck: Really interesting and good question. Looking back on the deal, Marion was averaging something like 11-8 for us. We felt Bo Outlaw could step in and give us the same since he's been a 15/10 12/9 and 12/9 guy for us in season's past. If you look at it they're really similar players. Both thrive on garbage points, don't need the ball to score, scrappy on the boards and superb defenders. The defense did tend to take a step back, but let's be honest, defense was never this team's calling. If we were going to win, it was going to be in sheer PPG. If you could keep us under 100, you had a chance; otherwise, we'd felt like we could win. We felt with letting go of Marion and adding Cliff Robinson to our perimeter oriented offense could make up for that void on the bench that moving Outlaw to the starting line-up created. What we saw was a period where we went from scoring 105 ppg to the drop off of about 97 ppg over the last 30 or 40 games. When you have the philosophy of holding teams under 100 and you're suddenly not averaging 100 yourself, things go bad fast, as we saw.

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Mitch Kupcheck: We don't think it was because of Sam's defense really, but more of the fact that it lowered flexibility on the schemes we could run. We couldn't really press or traq quite as much after Marion left.

Reporter from the Daily Bugle: Hi, Mitch. I was just curious to know if you have already been engaging in sidebar conversations with other GMs or are just targeting teams that you want to engage in trade talks. I know last season, as soon as the trade "season" (if you will) began, you blew the league's mind with the Shaq trade. Will we be seeing somethin, not necessarily of the same magnitude but like that again this season?

Mitch Kupcheck:Thanks for the question. We're definately in exploratory talks with teams, but to say much more than that would be premature. For us not to look at what's out there would not be prudent. So we're a number of conversations to see if we can aquire some additonal future assets and get some young vets that can really have break-out type seasons if they were given a chance. You saw the patient of the 76ers pay off with a guy like Chauncy Billups, and we'd like to be the benfactors of a guy like that. We are currently scouting a number of guys that fit that mold.