S66 Rockets Preseason presser

[78#]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for being here. Last season was a big step forward for this franchise. We made the playoffs for the first time in 5 seasons and won the division for the first time in 25 seasons or 4 live years. We made it to the second round of the playoffs losing a tough series to a very good Pelicans squad. Over the last few years we built up our draft assets and decided to slowly build while getting out of the luxury tax.

Once we were out of the tax, we decided to make moves to try to compete. We signed/traded Steeve Ho You Fat in RFA to give us a strong young presence in the paint. We then made a big trade involving Dejuan Baker from the Nuggets who brought a cornerstone player for this franchise. We also signed Gerry Foles and later involved him in a trade for James Northup. Those moves as well bringing in Darrin Alston helped this team improve 35 games in the standings.

With that, we've decided to push forward to try to even improve more this year by using our cap space to re-sign our key guys and add additional help.

In RFA, we re-signed young cornerstone player Sion James to a 5-year supermax contract. He has the potential to be one of the best players in PBSL history by being able to do everything on the floor and we want to show him we believe in him with this contract and hopefully he believes in us as well.

In UFA, we had cap room to re-sign Dejuan Baker, but he waited till new free Larry Williams signed his new contract. Williams gives us another scorer to add to Baker and James. Once Williams signed, Baker was able to re-sign with a supermax to finish what he started.

We then brought back key contributors from last season including Darrin Alston, Douglas Haun, and Monroe Holmes.

However we lament the fact on not bringing back Tony Tindall who was a key contributor. That's on me. Just got tunnel vision with big signings on day 1 of free agency. However we hope both Darrin Alston and Matthew Falcon can fill the void off the bench.

We had a good training camp and preseason and now looking to start the season.

Feel free to ask questions now.

[garbageman]

Sham Smith, Bulls.com: This is easily the best Rockets team I've seen in a long time (and possibly ever). How do you think this team matches up against the best Rockets team from any other era in your GM tenure?

[78#]

Sham Smith, Bulls.com: This is easily the best Rockets team I've seen in a long time (and possibly ever). How do you think this team matches up against the best Rockets team from any other era in your GM tenure?

Great question. Some of our strongest teams in the past were frontcourt centric with guys like Shaq, Big Z, CWebb, Bosh, and of course Al Horford who is the only player in sim league history to retire as a B/B. This team here has so much firepower on the perimeter with our frontcourt guys being strong defending and rebounding. Having Williams will free up more space for Sion and Dejuan. It's very exciting to see how this will transpire.

[Eazy P]

Sion looks like he's ready to become a star. What do you expect from him this year?

[78#]

Sion looks like he's ready to become a star. What do you expect from him this year?

He's still scratching the surface, but we feel he can already be one of the best players in the league. We definitely need him to perform at an All-NBA level this year if we want to contend. But he's on his way to becoming one of the best two-way players in the league.

[greepleairport]

Welcome back to the team of contenders in PBSL, led by Sion James, quite possibly my favorite player in the league. After last season's 2nd round exit, do you expect to go farther this year? Who will be your biggest challenge along the way? Win or lose, how long do you expect to run with this core of players?

[78#]

Welcome back to the team of contenders in PBSL, led by Sion James, quite possibly my favorite player in the league. After last season's 2nd round exit, do you expect to go farther this year? Who will be your biggest challenge along the way? Win or lose, how long do you expect to run with this core of players?

We definitely want to make a deeper run this year. Our goal is to win every game possible, get home court and make a run to win the Omega conference. As far as with this core group, I'm thinking at least 2 seasons, but probably 3 seasons, and then will try to reset around Sion after that.