BowToTheBill23: Welcome to the Golden State Warriors pre-season press conference. With this being my first presser as new GM of the Warriors, I would like to say thank you to the ownership for this opportunity. I am excited for the future of this great franchise
BowToTheBill23: It's an exciting time to be a Warrior fan (err, it will be exciting... in a little bit... I promise... just be patient). For the fans, we hope this new management brings a change from the "screw the future" and "Sim League???" approach of the previous GM's. Here, we are committed to bringing a championship caliber team to the fans.
BowToTheBill23: When we came in, we made it a top priority to give this team the best opportunity for future success. We felt the best way to do this was to trade away big/long contracts and get future assets in return. This meant saying goodbye to our top scorers from last season in Glenn Robinson and Caron Butler. We also parted with Zoran Planinic, Rodney Rogers, and Ike Diogu. While some people are upset that Nickoloz Tskitishvili and Nick Van Exel are on the team still, we urge the fans to be patient. Van Exel can provide some valuable minutes these next two seasons, and Nickoloz is only 24 and improved this training camp. We don't want to sacrifice our future just to dump contracts.
BowToTheBill23: This offseason we acquired Fran Vasquez (Planinic deal), Kyrlyo Fesenko (draft), DeAngelo Collins (free agency), Keith Van Horn (Butler deal), Craig Smith (Planinic), JR Smith (Butler), Delonte West (Robinson deal), and Anthony Carter (Butler).
BowToTheBill23: Lastly, in training camp, major progress was made by Nickoloz Tskitishvili who was motivated by his critics and improved his inside game and defense. Delonte West improved his D, Fran Vasquez and Kyrylo Fesenko regressed in D and rebounding, while Craig Smith improved his defense. JR Smith appears to have pretty much wasted both this training camp and his potential. The Sonics GM suspects drugs may be a problem. We are looking into it.
And that is our 2007 offseason. Any questions?