Boston Celtics Media Days

[Conroy]

GM Roy: Sorry to be late here fellas, this one is going to be a little rushed. We are entering our second year without Zo and it looks pretty obvious we are trying to get younger. We can trot out a starting lineup of rookies if we wanted and plan to give plenty of young guys an opportunity to prove themselves. We were very pleased with how the draft turned out. We landed our star PF in Carlos Boozer with the 4th pick and feel like we picked up long term options at the PG and SF positions with Boozers teammate Jay Williams and John Salmons. Late in the draft we picked up two young big men who will be projects but we look forward to developing them. Speaking of developing big men we couldn't be happier with the way Steven Hunter has put in the work in the offseason. He came in a defensive project and has turned himself into a potential long term starter in just 2 years. He and Boozer are both only 20 years old and look to have very bright futures here in Boston.

It's not all great news though last year Steve Francis was an all star and it may have gotten to his head. He had a disastrous TC and doesn't appear to be the player we used to call Stevie Franchise. We had planned to build around the young scoring do it all PG but have now scrapped that plan to build around our young front court.

I'll now answer any questions

[Xist2Inspire]

Random Reporter: With all the young talent you've assembled, will it be hard to spread out minutes and give these youngsters adequate time to evaluate them?

[WigNosy]

With Stevie Franchise's disappointing off-season, is there pressure to deal him before he hits RFA and commands a huge raise?

[JNR]

GWR: Something that I think needs to be addressed is your offense. With Francis taking a dive, it doesn't seem like you have anyone who you can depend on to put the ball in the hoop. Is it safe to say that you are going to address this need during the season or in free agency next year?

[Conroy]

Random Reporter: With all the young talent you've assembled, will it be hard to spread out minutes and give these youngsters adequate time to evaluate them?

We plan to experiment plenty with the rotations. We've been playing around the idea of this to start the season
PG: Jay Williams
SG: Steve Francis
SF: John Salmons
PF: Boozer
C: Steven Hunter

Have Bobby Phills come off the bench as the 6th man and just work in our other young guys probably give them 10-15 spot minutes a sim and just rotate them in and out and see who separates themselves

[IamQuailman]

Do you feel that your squad has enough to compete for a playoff spot again in the East?

[Soundwave]

Has the Celtics' luck run out?

[Conroy]

With Stevie Franchise's disappointing off-season, is there pressure to deal him before he hits RFA and commands a huge raise?

If the right offer comes along we will consider trading any player. Stevie went from shooting 54% on inside shots to 38% this preseason. I'm not too worried about him getting a huge deal, if he does it'll be because he earned it. If he continues his poor play, I'd pity the fools to give him big money.

[Conroy]

GWR: Something that I think needs to be addressed is your offense. With Francis taking a dive, it doesn't seem like you have anyone who you can depend on to put the ball in the hoop. Is it safe to say that you are going to address this need during the season or in free agency next year?

We thought we had that figured out with signing Ricky Davis to an offer sheet, but the Clippers matched without even a chance to work out a S&T.

Yes scoring will be down, but we hope maybe transitioning Francis to SG will allow him to focus less on distributing and more on scoring. We think Boozer can be that 20/10 guy and go to scorer in the paint, so our focus now will be finding scoring on the perimeter.

[Conroy]

Do you feel that your squad has enough to compete for a playoff spot again in the East?

We'd be lying if we said we thought we had it last year. This year our best player regressed and we got even younger. If we make it, it'll be because this young guys grew up fast, and that's something we would be pleased with.

[Conroy]

Has the Celtics' luck run out?

I've always said I'd rather be lucky than good...or in your case below average.

Frye the North

[Soundwave]

Has the Celtics' luck run out?

I've always said I'd rather be lucky than good...or in your case below average.

WIG the North

Tell us your thoughts on the league's new drug testing policy.

[IamQuailman]

Awarded 5 pts!