{{{ As everyone gets settled for the Lakers first press conference since winning the title. A team representative brings in their fresh Championship trophy to polish it off and leave it on the desk before introductions.}}}
{{{ After the media files in a team representaive walks up to the mic and addresses the media members. }}}
Team Representative: Good afternoon everyone and thank you for coming. Today we will be having an annual preseason press conference in which we will bring up a numerous topics. We will first start with discussing last season, then discuss the offseason, and move forward to the outlook of the regular season. Without delaying this any farther, I am proud to present to you, Lakers G.M. Mitch Kupcheck and stars Tracy McGrady and Allen Iverson.
Mitch Kupcheck: Good Afternoon, and I wanted to reiterate that we are thankful to all the members of the media for attending. We are very happy to be here today and start the new season. This will be the last time, we as a team will be talking about our historic championship run. We feel it's time to move forward and focus on becoming the first back-to-back champions, and doing so will take all of our focus on this season. As coach told the guys, this trophy is a rental and they're a lot of other hands that are trying to take it from you. If we don't focus solely on the task at hand, we won't be sitting here next year. More importantly, the league is getting much more competitive and there are no hand outs. Your first round match-up could be as tough as the finals match-up. I'll hand it over to Allen and Tracy to talk about the run a bit and I'll take over to talk about the offseason.
Allen Iverson: What up? First off let me say how happy i am to be a champion. Something, for awhile and i know T Mac can relate to, we didn't think would ever happen. Winning this trophy, man, I just fell in love at first sight. I consider Larry family now. I can't explain. You know.. you work so hard through the season, and sacrifice so much. Play through the injuries, through you guys assassinating our characters all season long. Picking apart each of our moves. Guys like TJ Simmons saying "I don't play well with others" and others in the media questioning me sacrificing part of my game for the big picture. Well, What do you have to say now? Do I play well with others ? Did I mess with chemistry on the court? See that's the problem, you guys pick a guy who doesn't talk like you want us to, or walk like you want us to, and all of the sudden we're the problem. You see me going out there with broken fingers, an ankle swollen up like there's an apple in there, and you want to talk about my work ethic, my heart. Then you've got guys who are the focal point to their team selling out in crucial games the playoffs with a bruised hip, but you guys are willing to throw him in the Hall of Fame before he retires; but me? I'm a chemistry nightmare. Please, a chemistry nightmare to everyone not in the locker room. I'm a living testament that you guys don't know what you're doing and this trophy is tangible truth that no one can deny. Now i'm going to hand it over to T Mac.
Tracy McGrady: Wow, I think A.I. had a lot of truth in what he was speaking. He's a guy that wears his heart on his sleeve and leaves it all on the court. I can and all of the other guys on the team can personally tell you A.I. is a team player, and if he shoots a lot, it's because we need it from him. You know, to win this championship, we all had to sacrifice big parts of our game to get to where we are today, myself included. Look at our team, from last year, AI, me, and Pau were all league players and only one of us made the all league team, and that was the third team. Only one all star amongst us. To be a part of this, you can't be selfish and you have to play your game and realize when one guy is getting doubled you have to trust your other guys to make the plays. To restate something that A.I. touched on earlier though, I thought it was really sweet to win this championship. Throughout my career, having never won a playoff series and the pressure mounting, man it just made it sweeter. I was even questioning myself and the effert I put in the game on and off the court. I came back and worked harder, and know what it takes to be a champion now. It means everything to me, to us as a team. It means a lot that Mitch kept most of the parts together so we could have another run at it. I don't know how to describe it besides being happy, but not satisfied. I'll say this, winning one just makes your appetite gets so much bigger and nothing else matters.
Mitch Kupcheck: Thanks for your perspective guys. Now on to the offseason: We really approached the off-season with a couple of different routes we could have taken. We saw there was a lot of high value guys, and as you know, we won't hesitate in reshaping the franchise if we can get better. After looking at the options, we decided staying the course was a great approach considering we were the defending champions. When I worked under Jerry West, he always told me that if you're staying the same, then you're regressing even as a champion. So, when we got word that Tim Duncan was on the market, naturally we felt we had to get involved. We took the approach that we needed to get their attention early and hold on to it, so we threw our best offer on the table and really let the other team's offers do the negotiating for us. We told the Cavs G.M. for a guy like Duncan we wouldn't waste their time or haggle them, and he really respected that; and we respected that he didn't do the same.
Mitch Kupcheck:As far as after TD, we felt we HAD to retain Allen, T Mac, and Big Ben. Luckily for us, they were all reasonable and took a little less than they could have gotten on the market to keep this team in tact. As Allen and T Mac have both said, it takes a ton of sacrifice to play on a team with so much talent. A lot of induvidual titles are thrown out the window on day 1 of training camp, and that's something we had to make sure Timmy was on board with. He obviously was and took a similar deal to Tracy and Allen and wanted to be a part of something special. We really wanted to retain Jason Richardson, but in talking with his agent, he felt he could garner much more than we could offer, so we told them to go out, test the market and see what he could get. If he could get a near max deal, then there's not much we could do about it. But if he wanted to come back, we could throw a midlevel deal his way. Jason was a huge piece of our team and won't be easy to replace. So we will see over the next few days how it all plays out. Before we open things up to questions, we're going to bring the 3 time MVP of the League out, Tim Duncan everyone.
Time Duncan: Hi, thanks for having me. I just wanted to say i'm not here to bring a ton of attention to myself here. I'm very happy to be a part of this historic franchise. I really am here to be part of the team and do my job and hopefully help these guys win another championship. I know it's been tough throughout my career in Cleveland in the playoffs and the franchise was in a tough spot. We always seemed to be in that middle ground as a team and a franchise which didn't allow us to grow the way we needed to, to become contenders. I was really cautious about moving to L.A. with the glam and the lights and 24/7 media attention. So much so, i called J Will who I played with in Cleveland, who really talked me into it. He just told me, it's all about championship banners here, nothing else matters. After talking with Mitch and the other guys. they told me this franchise's goal is to always improve, which is why you see so much movement with players. I thought that was funny because so often you see a player having to demand a team improve while they're there and threaten, here it's the complete opposite. I secretly think it's because they don't want to retire any more jerseys.
{{{Crowd Laughs}}}
Time Duncan: Seriously though, the goal is to become another one of the great big men to play for this franchise and to do that, you have to win multiple championships.
Mitch Kupcheck:As you can see, no one's tiptoeing around our goals this season, and they also realize we have an incredible target on our backs. We'll get everyone's best, every night. Now I'll open it up to you guys for questions to either me or Timmy, Allen, or Tracy. Thanks.