*Media all walk in to the conference room where the below meme is projected on a wall with one of those 1990s bulb projectors from schools*
GM Quailmen: Have a seat, my friends. Have a seat. We decided to up our flare after hearing about some of the theatrics in other teams' past pressers. Cutting edge, state of the art stuff, am I right?
*Media all murmur as they shuffle to their seats*
GM Quailmen: Nothing really to discuss regarding last season, except that we are excited from what we saw in Cliff Paugh. He has a lot more upside than we expected when we acquired him last year during RFA. We are excited to have him as part of our foundational core. But let's talk about something else. What an off-season. We had hoped that one of our draft picks would hit the lotto since we had 28.5% of the lotto picks in this draft. But little did we know that the pick with the least odds would hit and jump from #13 to #1. I'm not exactly sure if that is the first time #13 has jumped to #1 overall, but man. No one saw that coming. We were very excited to take De'Aaron Fox #1 overall as we can see him potentially developing into a player that can play multiple positions for us, including PG. He is still pretty raw, but long-term, we are excited about his size and skillset. With 3 other picks, we decided to shop around and see if we could get back into the top 5 of the draft. There were a few prospects we liked there, but Jaren Jackson Jr. was next on our draft board behind De'Aaron. So we were thrilled to be able to get back into the draft and grab him at #3. With our last remaining lotto pick, we selected Jarrett Allen, who we liked as a big who can do a little of everything. We made a few trades, sending out players like Chieck Diallo for some cash considerations and Lamont Ellis, who had a little upside to him.
GM Quailmen: RFA was pretty quiet for us, as we had only a couple of targets that really interested us. Obviously we didn't come to terms with either, so we pushed forward to UFA where we brought in a couple players with chips on their shoulders, ready to prove the league wrong. Lino Brookins has been viewed by the league as a weird player that just would never pan out. But to us, we saw a 23 year old who was hungry to prove he's ready to play in this league. I know for sure he will be trying to take a starting spot from some of our incumbents, and I know I love that competitive edge. Ernie Acuna is another 22 year old who spent the first 3 seasons of his career playing for Charlotte before being traded to and subsequently released by the Mavs. He came into training camp as an afterthought and came out as our projected starting PG. That tells you something right there.
GM Quailmen: To speak a little more to training camp, overall it was a massive success, as all of our "Big 4" improved. We had a few players tap into some potential we weren't aware of when acquiring them (i.e. Ernie and Jarrett), and Lino making great strides towards where he wants to be as a pro. Unfortunately, some other players don't do well with competition and fail to step up, we are a little disappointed in a few, but know that there's always a chance that we can work them into the rotations. Who knows? Maybe next year, they grow from this moment and step up.
GM Quailmen: All in all, it was a great off-season for us, and while we aren't projected to win much or make the playoffs, it will be a season of pushing forward towards our future goals and objectives. Any questions?
