{{Intro: Mitch Kupcheck walks into the room followed by two players wearing Lakers practice jerseys fresh out of practice. One player is Iverson and the Other is Dirk. Kupcheck walks to the mic and begins to speak.}}}
Mitch Kupcheck: Good morning everyone. First of all I want to thank everyone for coming out to the presser. Obviously, there’s be a lot that’s happened since we last met. We’re here to discuss a few things. One, talk about the draft and us selecting Delonte West. Two, Talk about our pre-free agency moves {{{Points to AI}}} and resigning this guy {{{Points to Dirk next to him}}}. Lastly we’ll discuss a lot of the deals we handed out and a projected starting lineup.
Mitch Kupcheck: So to get on to our first topic with the draft. We had 3 picks to start the draft, but only ended up selecting one player. We do value the draft as much as it would seem differently, but we’re always looking for ways to compete. With the Magic pick we obviously decided to make a move to acquire who we think is a top flight superstar in this league. With the nets pick, we unfortunately painted ourselves into a corner with Eric Snow’s contract, who at this point is a great player, but we felt it was time to take a step in another direction and also got the opportunity to select a young defender in Artest. We didn’t feel like there was a ton of value out there with those two picks compared to what we received in return. Finally with our last pick we decided to take a combo guard out of St. Joe’s in Delonte West. We were very, very excited to grab him when we came up to pick. We think we will be able to get him some playing time at the back-up 1 and 2. His versatility will be a great help to our organization. Obviously we will give D Fish a chance to earn some playing time.
Mitch Kupcheck: On to our next subject, Prefree-agency moves. We alluded to a few moves we made with our picks. We are very excited to introduce Mr. Allen Iverson. {{{Crowd claps}}}. AI we felt is a top 5 player in the league and arguably the best 2 in the league. We really felt after the last 2 years being focused on offense we needed to get back to our core and play D. With AI we felt like we could adjust our team to have more defenders and he would be able to pick up the scoring load by losing Stack and Mash while still fitting in our defensive mindset. Another huge part of our offseason and our long term future is having Dirk resign with us. We are very happy to have him here for the next 6 years. He’s a foundational piece for our franchise.
Mitch Kupcheck: Last and definitely not least we feel like we had a near perfect free agency haul. We finally got the point guard we’ve been looking to aquire since Marbury was traded. We feel with J Will, we have a creative passer who can get a lot of guys involved and can get a little showtime back in our offense. We’re going to plug him in as our starting point, with Iverson next to him to fill our backcourt. We project AI to be our primary scorer with Dirk right behind him who will be starting at our 4 position. We’ll put Donyell, who really wanted to be in L.A. to compete for a championship, next to him at the 3. Donyell took a lot less money to be here, and we’re going to do our best to not let him down. At Center we will probably try a few things. Initially we’ll start Big Ben and see if we’re getting enough offensive production. We feel like if we let Dirk really focus on his offensive game and let Ben and Donyell who are two great rebounders and defenders.
Mitch Kupcheck: Initially, we will try and have Othella Harrington come off the bench at the 4 and 5 spots and try to get him 25 MPG. We also want to try and develop Artest to see his future in the league to give him some minutes. In summary we see J Will, AI, Marshall, Dirk and Big ben with Othella, Quentin, and Delonte being our main cogs off the bench. We will now allow some time for questions. Please feel free.