Dallas Mavs Offseason/Training Camp Presser

[DarthVegito]

Hey everyone! Won't be here for long, just wanted to give an update on how our offseason went and how the players have adjusted throughout training camp. As always we'll take a few questions at the end.

I'll quickly go through what our goals were going into the FA period and how we feel we about those goals now. Our obvious #1 priority was to retain the talents of Keith Van Horn. He wanted to test the market a bit but we always felt his heart as in Dallas. But if for some reason we lost him, we were definitely prepared to go in a different direction. Well it ended up that we got Plan A and Plan B. A being Van Horn and B being Nicholoz. That takes care of our starters and the rest was simply obtaining as much depth as possible. We ended up with Adrian Griffin, Anthony Carter, and Ernest Brown. All of whom we are very excited about and think will provide excellent depth and defense off the bench. So I know many have been asking how do we plan on utilizing everyone. Well going into the season we will be experimenting a tad. Our starters will be Biedrins(C), Van Horn(PF), Jamison(SF), Smith(SG), Williams(PG). Obviously the experiment I am speaking of is moving Van Horn to the 4. With Keith's size, talent, rebounding, and simply all around great game we feel he will fill this role very well. If this works the way we'd like we will have some amazing depth at the PF position. He can play the 4 and also spell for Jamison when needed. We think this will not only work but cause huge mismatches for the larger, more nonathletic PFs who will have to guard him out to the 3 point line. So as I said this will be somewhat of an experiment, but it is one we feel good about.

Onto training camp...Below is how the players fared in this off-seasons training camp and workouts. The letter in () is what the grade was before TC.

Dallas Mavs Training Camp


Andris Biedrins B(B-) C- D(D-) A- A-(B+) A
Ernest Brown B- C- D+(D) A-(B+) B C(D)
Darko Milicic B- D+(C-) C B- C+ C
Brandon Bass B C C- B B-(C+) B
Nickoloz Tskiti B- C C(C-) B- A- C(B)
Antawn Jamison A C+(B-) C- B C+ C
Keith Van Horn B- B+ D+ B B C
J.R. Smith C+(B-) B+(B) C C+ D+ A
Adrian Griffin C B C+ B+(A-) C C
Deron Williams C+(C) B+ A(A-) B(C+) D+ A(B)I think Deron heard his GMs disappointment and vowed to get better.
Anthony Carter C C+ B+(B) A- D+ D(C)

As you can see we had a great off-season. Our young guys worked really hard and it has definitely showed. And they aren't done either. I know Biedrins, Bass, Smith, and Deron all want to get a bit more training in before the season gets underway. So needless to say we are looking forward to the start of the season. We have very high expectations this year. We have no reason to believe that we can't climb our way to a top 3 seed in the West once again.

Go ahead with the questions......

[BeeBall Reasons]

Chris Paul and Deron Williams battled for who would go one and two, Chris Paul won out. Chris Paul and Deron Williams went head to head in the NBA playoffs, Chris Paul won out. with rumors that Deron broke a backboard with chris paul's face on it on a dunk. How do you feel Chris was used as motivation for Deron to improve this offseason and how will Deron try to get his revenge this season?

[BeeBall Reasons]

also why'd you trade for Jamison bro

[Pelicans78]

Are you worried about your defense on the perimeter and how do you fare among the best in the west?

[DarthVegito]

Are you worried about your defense on the perimeter and how do you fare among the best in the west?

Finally a question from someone who matters!

To answer your first question, we are not too concerned. We feel that although we were a bit stronger on the perimeter D last season, with Deron's focus this offseason on his defense, we won't skip a beat. We love our depth this year and we focused on our backups coming in a simply playing solid defense as we won't need them to score too much. We will find out soon enough, hopefully our defense doesn't present that big of a problem.

And well to answer the second part, I'd say we feel really good about the season and our competition. We'll obviously know more after the first week, but our expectations are certainly high. We feel we can win a 7 game series with ANY team in the West. There are 3 top teams we see in the West, not including ourselves of course, and that would be the Grizzlies, Lakers, and Rockets. We feel these are the three teams that we will gauge our strength on.

[Xist2inspire]

J. Felders, from SI.com, here. It looks like Beans is ready to enter beast mode......but NickT, not so much. What's the situation at PF between NickT and Brandon Bass?

Also, there's been a lot of banter between other GMs and you this offseason. Are you confident that your team is focused for the entire season, and not just for thr rivalry games?

[DarthVegito]

J. Felders, from SI.com, here. It looks like Beans is ready to enter beast mode......but NickT, not so much. What's the situation at PF between NickT and Brandon Bass?

Good move not attempting to spell his last name. We don't try either. The situation at PF is a beautiful one. Our starting PF, Keith Van Horn, is ready once again to have a great year. Nickoloz is ready to back up Keith, and Brandon will be the third guy off the bench. That may switch at some point as Bass has improved a bit and Nicholoz is still having trouble adjusting to the new system. But we are confident he will get it. He's young and we think we signed him to a very fair deal and look forward to his future with this team.

And yes Beans is simply ecstatic about this season. He worked out all offseason long and has went hard in training camp and he's ready to show what he's got.

Also, there's been a lot of banter between other GMs and you this offseason. Are you confident that your team is focused for the entire season, and not just for thr rivalry games?

As far as the banter goes, the FO in Dallas really doesn't like all the talking. They hadn't planned on saying much this offseason and haven't until recently provoked. We finished the season with the 3 seed last year. We did not expect to finish the season so strong but we did. And because of that many other teams felt that our seeding was fluke. Well that is fine but we are planning to prove this year that it was no such thing. Some franchises simply don't like us. Whether it's because they are jealous of our GM skills or a million other reasons. We can not concern ourselves by lowering ourselves to their low standards. From here on out the Dallas Mavericks will do their utmost to "keep it classy". Sure we love the rivalry games, The Texas rivalry being one of our favorites, but we are very focused on the task at hand and that is winning our division and getting the best seed as possible.

[BallSoHard]

Talk about the teams you've modeled your recent sucess after in terms of build.

Also, please talk about last years GM of the year race in which you were outspoken on, the feelings on not winning it, and if it was any motivation into this year from some of the big splash moves you made.

[DarthVegito]

Talk about the teams you've modeled your recent sucess after in terms of build.

That may be a difficult one. I'd have to say none in particular. Although at the same time I have gotten lots of advice from other GMs who have had lots of success. So even though I haven't modeled my team after a particular team, I've used that advice if building my team. When I started I had one goal. That goal was to keep the team as young as possible and not sign any players to contracts that would handcuff my team in the future. I've seen sooo many teams paralyzed for many seasons because of this very thing. After a few seasons of very young cores and growing players, I decided I didn't have enough veteran leadership. All of the top teams over the past years have had top offensive superstars. At least one. Here in Dallas even though we call this a rebuild, we still want to compete and contend every year. We have exceeded expectations every year since the new management came in. First year we were supposed to be bottom of the West...we missed the playoffs by a few wins. Last year we weren't supposed to make the playoffs...we took the 3 seed in the West. This year our goal is no doubt to win our first playoff series. With our addition of the NBA Scoring Champ, Antawn Jamison, we feel that this is very well in our grasp. We now simply have to execute.

Also, please talk about last years GM of the year race in which you were outspoken on, the feelings on not winning it, and if it was any motivation into this year from some of the big splash moves you made.

Well that was tough, I'll be honest. I thought our GM and the Raptors GM deserved it equally but I am biased so I thought we should have won it. Sure the Raptors were good. But we were ridiculed for nearly every move we made last year, and was constantly talked out of the playoffs. But the moves proved to be genius moves and we finished with the 3 seed. But we received no respect for that. Which is fine. We don't need the GM of the Year title(of which like only 3 people voted on). And as far as the big splashes we made in the offseason go, losing this award played no part. We swapped a young talent for the NBA Scoring Champ. We're fine with that move and would do it again. The average age of our starters is 25 yrs old, and the whole team average age is 26 and that's including the aged vets we brought in. So we are very happy about the direction of our team and ready to get this season underway.