Boston Celtics 2013 Media Day

[Conroy]

GM Roy: Welcome. We've had an interesting few seasons here lately. We miss the playoffs in John Wall's rookie year he has a couple bad TC's in a row. We actually make the conference finals in his sophomore campaign, and stumbled into the playoffs last season, getting swept. We made the tough decision to trade Carl Landry mid-season. We loved the player he was and what he brought to the team, but it was clear the team, as currently constructed, was not very competitive. We wanted to reset our timeline to revolve around Wall and Hawes age in the 23-25 range. So trading 29 year old Carl Landry for a starter in a position of need (JR Smith) who was 27 (now 28), JJ Reddick and a 1st round pick fit our plans too perfectly to pass up.

We ended up with some mid-teens picks and were thrilled with who fell to us, Mason Plumlee and Kelly Olynyk. We beleive Mason will develop into a solid starter at the 4 position and Kelly could become a nice stretch 4 in the future. We declined JJ Reddick with the plan to open up some cap space sign an RFA or UFA in round 1 and go over the cap to resign him. All it did though was leave us with enough cap space to make us think we could sign someone. RFA and UFA were a complete disaster. We signed Taj Gibson in RFA which would have fit this team nicely, but the 76ers matched and that was that. UFA was a complete whiff, we tried to sign a starting caliber PF and missed out on them all, we did sign an interesting piece in 26 year old Jon Brockman and his 100 rating in Off Rebounding. We still have some cap space and some assets I do not believe this roster is a complete one.

We also finally had a pretty strong TC. Spencer Hawes continues to develop with a 21 point increase. Olynyk lost some potential but made a 21 point gain, Plumlee had a large 34 point leap, the aforementioned Brockman increased by 31 points, and last but not least finally John Wall appears ready to make the leap with a 47 point improvement. After 3 straight TC's of slight to negative improvements it was a safe to say a relief to see John come in and ready to lead this team.

Ill open it up for questions.

[ballsohard]

Your team, at least in the public eye, has seemed to lost that classic Conroy agressiveness which resulted in the luck of the Irish. Will the less active more docile version of the Celtics GM continue to reign or will the old championship pedegree Conroy come back out to play?

[NOLa.]

Where do you see this team ranked in the East? Are you above the 76ers at least?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[garbageman]

We saw a lot of Mason Plumlee in the PF spot in preseason. Did he play well enough to secure the starting spot in the lineup, or is that where Brockman comes in?

[IamQuailman]

Your team, at least in the public eye, has seemed to lost that classic Conroy agressiveness which resulted in the luck of the Irish. Will the less active more docile version of the Celtics GM continue to reign or will the old championship pedegree Conroy come back out to play?

OH FUK

[IamQuailman]

You hinted at being ready to make some more moves. Care to enlighten?

[Conroy]

Your team, at least in the public eye, has seemed to lost that classic Conroy agressiveness which resulted in the luck of the Irish. Will the less active more docile version of the Celtics GM continue to reign or will the old championship pedegree Conroy come back out to play?

GM Roy: I can't tell if this is a compliment, a veiled insult, a veiled compliment, an obvious insult or all of the above. I have probably stepped away from the trade market quite a bit. And maybe don't track stats as much as I used to, but I'm still pretty active in the day to day. Ya know we had some bad luck there for a while, Boozer walked, the trade market for Hunter dried up, then all of a sudden he was worth a fortune once another team acquired him after exactly 1 half season, some dudes in TC just never developed and Wall took until the last season of his rookie contract to have a positive TC. Instead of using this as motivation to get better, it's just made me take the patient approach of trying to build through the draft again.

[Conroy]

Where do you see this team ranked in the East? Are you above the 76ers at least?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

GM Roy: Well we don't really have a starting PF. And because of that we essentially don't have a bench. We are probably middle of the pack in the East somewhere between the bottom of the barrel playoff teams and above the tankers. I don't like to compare our team with another in particular. If other teams can continue to have the patience to trape, I mean trade in this league, and I've lost it then I'm ok with that. Just have to continue to try to make this roster make sense.

[Conroy]

We saw a lot of Mason Plumlee in the PF spot in preseason. Did he play well enough to secure the starting spot in the lineup, or is that where Brockman comes in?

It looked like Mason was going to be prematurely forced to start, and that still may be the case. But he averaged just above 5 rpg, that simply will not suffice. On the positive he did average almost 3 apg with a stellar 4.0 A/T ratio. His passing was one thing that stood out to us and we were happy to see. If rebounding continues to be an issue, I would say you are right Brockman will start and be a rebounding specialist and Plumlee may settle into a 6th man type role playing both forward positions maybe even dabbling in a little bit of Center.

[Conroy]

You hinted at being ready to make some more moves. Care to enlighten?

Anything and everything is on the table. John Wall especially for how much we favor him, probably won't be moved because I doubt anyone would pony up the package it would take. Spencer Hawes again probably falls into that category as well. Jared Dudley at the end of the day is a two way player and is under contract throughout his prime. I'd say he or JR Smith is most likely to be traded but only if we struggle early and they request to get on a team that may be more competitive.

[WigNosy]

You shopped Jared Dudley heavily last season. Do you felt it hurt his focus? Should we expect more of the same this year?