Golden State Warriors 2002-2003 Press Conference

[Bowtothebill23]

GM Bow Bill: Thank you to everyone for attending this season's preseason press conference. As you can see, we have a different superstar here with us today, so this press conference is a little weird for all of us here at Golden State.

GM Bow Bill: Last season, we wanted to give Shawn Kemp the opportunity Karl Malone had in his early years in Sacramento. We wanted to give him a team that would lockdown defensively and allow him to score 30 a game to win for us. It worked to an extent: Shawn posted one of the most ridiculous raw stat lines of the last decade and helped us beat a vaunted Sonics team in the first round... I'll be honest. After that first round, I started allowing myself to think about a rematch vs the Hawks. Ahead of us, we had an 8 seeded Mavericks team that we would have home court against then either the 7 seeded Spurs or the 3 seeded Blazers whom we'd had our way with throughout the season. Everything was pointing up. Then it all came crashing down in Game 2 vs the Mavs when we lost in overtime. Unfortunately, the Mavs never looked back and blew us out every game in Dallas. It was a humbling experience for 2 reasons: 1) We had just blown our chances at going to the Western Conference Finals to an 8 seed and 2) This team had no room to make moves and was only going to get older and decline more: I was afraid this was as far as this team would ever go.

GM Bow Bill: Right after the playoffs, I spent some time figuring out what I wanted to do. Could I trade Kemp for a rebuilding package? Well I'd tried to do that before, and it's much harder than it really should've been. A lot of teams in this league think 2 in the bush is better than a superbird in the hand. Or I could've tried and run it back. What if we had won game 2? Would we be facing the Hawks again? Could just continuity and better gameplanning be the solution? But I just couldn't get away from the age of Pack, Kemp, and Sabonis. Luckily, almost immediately after the Finals, Sonics GM messaged me about a Kemp trade. It was a long and thorough discussion, but we struck a deal to send out Kemp and Pack for Jalen Rose, Jim Jackson, and Chris Anderson. We cannot thank Shawn enough for all he's done. The Greatest Player of All Time, he'll go into the Hall of Fame a Warrior, and his jersey will be retired here at Oracle Arena whenever he decides to call it quits. But we're incredibly excited to have Jalen as the new face of the franchise. Jalen was picked in the first round of the Sim League Mock Creation Draft, so we're thrilled to have him.

GM Bow Bill: This season is going to be both fun and a little underwhelming. Even with trading for Rose, we took a small step back in all likelihood. The problem is: every other Western Conference contender got better. We'll be fighting just to make the playoffs for the first time ever. It's not going to be easy, but it'll be fun watching this new team and new superstar come together.

With that said, we'll open the floor to questions.

[MESSI_2.0]

Some suns guy:

With your team well over the cap, and your stated expectations of fighting to just make the playoffs, do you see your team making several moves to get under the salary cap number, or are you planning to try and ride this thing out until next season when you get a lot of space back?

[logpmess]

With Kemp, you knew your game plan and the entire offense was developed around him. What obstacles do you foresee in game planning now that your work horse is a perimeter guy? How big of an adjustment do you anticipate there being?


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[Xist2Inspire]

Random Reporter: You said that Jalen's the new face of the franchise...but he's no spring chicken himself. How long do you think it'll be before another change is in order? Also, as the only notable young talent on your roster, what are you expecting out of the Birdman this season?

[42PhD]

Dr. Rocker of the Cleveland Rocker:

Your frontcourt is pretty bad, and you seem to have a glut of talent in the backcourt. Is this the sign of a move to come?

[Bowtothebill23]

Some suns guy:

With your team well over the cap, and your stated expectations of fighting to just make the playoffs, do you see your team making several moves to get under the salary cap number, or are you planning to try and ride this thing out until next season when you get a lot of space back?

This year all but has to be our last season in the luxury tax. If things go way south, there are a couple moves we can make to try to lower our tax bill this year.. But we can afford our bill as it stands now, plus we'll be cutting some mins at the deadline which will lower our tax bill further.

[Bowtothebill23]

With Kemp, you knew your game plan and the entire offense was developed around him. What obstacles do you foresee in game planning now that your work horse is a perimeter guy? How big of an adjustment do you anticipate there being?


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Well with Kemp, I always ran an inside focus. I don't think I ever ran a sim with even a balanced focus because Kemp was so dominant inside, I spent most seasons trying to find other inside scorers to complement him. It will be a challenge, but one good thing about knowing we're not winning a championship this year is that it gives us the ability to experiment. We plan on mixing high, medium, and low motion along with high, medium, and low pace and finding which system Jalen plays best in. We also want to see what 3 pt usage and defense he plays best in. We're going to have max contract space next year even if we don't unload JJ. We want to find the perfect player to complement Jalen so we need to find what system we'll be running next year.

[Bowtothebill23]

Random Reporter: You said that Jalen's the new face of the franchise...but he's no spring chicken himself. How long do you think it'll be before another change is in order? Also, as the only notable young talent on your roster, what are you expecting out of the Birdman this season?

Jalen isn't a young player that will grow but he is 29 and he had a camp jump in the 20s this year I believe. He's got another 2 training camps before he starts getting hurt badly. Also, coming from a guy who had Kemp and watching Penny over the last couple TCs, those high level guys take a while to die completely. He'll be a very productive player into his low-mid-30s. Not to say he'll be our #1 player all that time, but I'm not worried about him falling off a cliff anytime soon.

Birdman is a guy we were really excited to acquire. He offers good defense and great shot blocking ability. Ideally, he'd be a #5 or 6 on a championship team, but he's our #4 right now. What he showed in the preseason is a lot like what I want to see from him this season. 9-10 points per game, 8-9 rebounds per game, 2.5 blocks per game, and, most importantly, stay out of foul trouble. He needs to provide some kind of rim protection, but he needs to stay on the floor to do that.

[Bowtothebill23]

Dr. Rocker of the Cleveland Rocker:

Your frontcourt is pretty bad, and you seem to have a glut of talent in the backcourt. Is this the sign of a move to come?

Again, this season isn't a competing season, so we're not going to rush to mortgage any future to go get better bigs. But we also feel our bigs from a defensive and rebounding perspective aren't half bad. Anderson could start for most teams, if not he'd be an elite backup big. We have no problem starting him at the 4. Marc Jackson, Zendon Hamilton, and Jahidi White make a very good 3-4-5 big combo. Sabonis isn't the ideal starting center. But if he can provide 25-30 minutes of solid center minutes and defend and rebound with his size, we have the backups and the perimeter players to cover for him.

But should the opportunity present itself that we can go get a cheap/expiring big in exchange for some of our expiring backcourt pieces, we'll pull the trigger.

[NickMalone77]

Many feel that your coaching skills will now come to be tested without having the best player in the league on your roster. How excited are you to be coaching an entirely new team with Warrior stalwarts like Erick Snow and Sabonis with newcomers like Jalen and Jim Jackson?

[Bowtothebill23]

Many feel that your coaching skills will now come to be tested without having the best player in the league on your roster. How excited are you to be coaching an entirely new team with Warrior stalwarts like Erick Snow and Sabonis with newcomers like Jalen and Jim Jackson?

First of all, we're getting a little tired of "proving ourselves" after winning 2 titles, at least one playoff series in each of the first 12 seasons, and "overachieving" each of the last few years. Last season we were an "average team," the year before that a "washed up Kemp team," etc etc. But we are always excited to prove the doubters wrong. This season will be less about my coaching and winning and more about setting ourselves up for next season and finding the best gameplan for Jalen. That's when we feel we can really show the organization we are.

[WigNosy]

What sort of a role do you foresee for Birdman Andersen going forward? Will he be counted on to be the defensive anchor or is he just another big in the rotation?

[Bowtothebill23]

What sort of a role do you foresee for Birdman Andersen going forward? Will he be counted on to be the defensive anchor or is he just another big in the rotation?

I'm one who doesn't take the term "defensive anchor" lightly. I think those guys are bigs who can single handedly bring your defensive rating down multiple points or can turn a bad defense into an average one or an average one into a good one or a good one into an elite one. I don't think Chris Anderson will ever come close to touching that. But I think he can be a solid starting defensive big. He needs to get his defensive rebounding up to truly be a really good defensive player, but I'd feel confident having him match up with most power forwards in the league now.

[Darth Vegito]

How will you feel about any further success that Shawn Kemp has being a member of the Supersonics? And do you think your fan base will be torn if the two teams were to meet in the playoffs again? Expect to see tons of Sonics jerseys at your home games in support of Shawn?

[Bowtothebill23]

How will you feel about any further success that Shawn Kemp has being a member of the Supersonics? And do you think your fan base will be torn if the two teams were to meet in the playoffs again? Expect to see tons of Sonics jerseys at your home games in support of Shawn?

Shawn is still an incredible player, so we fully expect him to have tremendous success in Seattle. Honestly, I know a lot of fans in the area are torn on this subject. Many recognize how incredible he was for this franchise and will root for him to keep winning. Many fans also want to see him fail to prove that we made him just as much as he made us. I find myself leaning slightly towards the second side more so just because I don't wanna see my division rival raising division and championship banners, I want to do that here in Oakland. As for the fans though, I expect the Sonics to be the second favorite team of most fans here despite the fact that they're division rivals. I think fans will embrace Jalen as their favorite player with Shawn being their favorite non-Warrior.

[IamQuailman]

Awarded 5 pts!