Bobcats S70 Pre-Season Press Conference

[drkavarga]

Guess who's back, back again?
Kavarga’s back, tell a friend
Guess who's back, guess who's back
Guess who's back, guess who's back
Guess who's back, guess who's back

Back again for a preseason presser and things are a lot different this season. Three seasons of almost the exact same record didn’t tell me this core was working so I did a Firesale and got rid of almost everybody. Smalley, James, and Armentrout are the three guys I’m going to build around. Bonnett, Cole, Dimaggio, Burr, and Crumley are all back from last season. Dimaggio had a fantastic preseason averaging 22 points with 3 blocks. Speaking of blocks that’s definitely the strong point of this team. The fact that we won a game in the preseason is very encouraging. It took 10 blocks to get it done, everything else was fairly even, but we won. We’ll see how it goes but the last few seasons have been kinda the same so starting fresh and just messing around with player rotations, depth charts, and strategies is the goal this season. Then building up gradually from the bottom to the top is the long term plan. The other thing I’m doing is to find supporting cast players to put around the big three. Basically just looking for three of four guys and then going from there. I’ll have only $63 million on the books next season with returning players and I’ll have half of these players the next two seasons after this. That’ll give me time to see who fits and who can go while adding some higher draft picks and gambling in UFA with the extra cap space to add to it. Basically I can do whatever I want which allows a lot of freedom as it relates to team building. My guess is 2062 for when it starts showing playoff contendership which I’m cool with. Being 6th or 7th every season isn’t the goal, being a top 8 in the league and a title contender is which is the other reason for the season early reset considering there wasn’t much growth. It also didn’t help that JVG dropped last season in TC which was a huge letdown. It would’ve been worse if Erickson didn’t play such good defense. This season just seeing what I can do with random yellows and greens is what I’m doing. Hell if this team wins 15 games I’ll be happy. If the team doesn’t finish last that’ll be a huge win. Abracadabra, let’s see what the team can do.

[Eazy P]

With the moves made are you starting over again or do you have other plans?

[Black Superman]

Desert here,
With your books completely free next season, are you going to go after top free agents or ride out the youth movement? We in Phoenix think you did a great job with gaining assets this off-season.

[garbageman]

Sham Smith, Bulls.com: Your future big 3 of Jizzle James, Melvin Armentrout, and Albert Smalley overlapping in position capabilities, what positions do you see each of them playing on the Bobcats of the future?

[RPF]

Can you give us 2 reasons for the fans for the Bobcats to get excited for this season?

[drkavarga]

With the moves made are you starting over again or do you have other plans?

Starting over with the option to change things up after this season. Thinking about trying a Moneyball strategy with getting cheap talent that can ball with maybe one or two stars added in. Or I could just give out big money deals to top free agents and hope to get some of them to sign. Basically all options are on the table.

[drkavarga]

Desert here,
With your books completely free next season, are you going to go after top free agents or ride out the youth movement? We in Phoenix think you did a great job with gaining assets this off-season.

Thank you for that. I’m going to base that on how this season goes. I can either keep going with the youth movement or go all in. Right now leaning with the youth movement with cheap contracts that allows me to both keep out of the tax and have the cap space to re-sign my players when they get to RFA.

[drkavarga]

Sham Smith, Bulls.com: Your future big 3 of Jizzle James, Melvin Armentrout, and Albert Smalley overlapping in position capabilities, what positions do you see each of them playing on the Bobcats of the future?

One of the SGs will be traded at some point for a PF, C, or PG that’s of similar value or draft picks most likely. Or I could have one be the sixth man and roll with it. But that’s the current plan as of now.

[drkavarga]

Can you give us 2 reasons for the fans for the Bobcats to get excited for this season?

Number one, we’ve got a lot of rookie talent that’s going to likely be stars in this league. Seeing them now before they become top talents is a good reason. Secondly the shot blocking could land them a souvenir ball going by how the preseason went.

[MexicanMamba]

As a close follower of the move, can you explain what you saw in Albert Smalley that made him the guy to make the swap from Funkhouser?

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[K-100]

Any regrets about dumping Dino Sanchez?

[drkavarga]

Any regrets about dumping Dino Sanchez?

None at all. He was meh before his TC bump so no regrets. It was worth it just to watch the scramble from everyone in the Free For All to try and sign him.

[drkavarga]

As a close follower of the move, can you explain what you saw in Albert Smalley that made him the guy to make the swap from Funkhouser?

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To me it was a look to the future move. I saw some scoring abilities and if he improves in the other categories, basically TC bumps from C’s to B’s in 4 out of 7 categories he’ll be good to go. Didn’t expect to get James though and it’s a similar situation with him especially when it comes to rebounding.