S3 1982 Warriors Presser: Dem Some Big Boys

[greepleairport]

Welcome back to the Bay, ladies and gentlemen. 1981 was a big jump for us after missing the playoffs in the 1980 season, but we fell short. The Nuggets combo of Alex English and Dan Roundfield proved to be too much for our squad, so when the time to make big changes came, we made big changes.

Robert Parish-sized changes. Big changes. Paired with Moses, Parish now lives in the scariest front court in sim league history.

We were devastated to lose a wonderful rookie like Alton Lister, fresh off his DPOY ROOKIE season, but the time to win is now, and Parish held the one key Lister lacked: offense. With both Moses and Parish doubling up on scoring and defense and rebounding on both ends of the floor, we think we’ll be a tough team to beat.

Looking back on our conference finals series with the Nuggets, Alex English and Dan Roundfield destroyed us. We still don’t have an answer for English, but we should be able to neutralize Roundfield at a minimum. Hopefully, should we cross paths again in the playoffs, that’s enough to turn our 1 game win into 4, and advance past the reigning champs (congrats again, btw).

Our (incorrectly) perceived biggest challenge, Portland BluntForceTraumaTrailblazers, seemed to take a step backward this offseason, in terms of their ability to challenge for a title, but we’ll never sleep on them or the man at the helm of it all, Wig.

The Kings made some solid offseason moves, but (respectfully) they were the team we had hoped to meet in the conference finals, because we felt we had the best chance to beat them. Despite their upgrades, we like our chances.

Last (but certainly not least), the Phoenix Suns put up the next biggest fight against us in the playoffs, and we were pretty lucky to have prevailed. We know they’re a tough challenge, and are probably more tough than last year, now. I like our chances at shutting down everyone on this team not named Magic Johnson, but it will not be easy (looking at you, John Long).

While these are my perceived toughest challenges, I would not be surprised that I’m overlooking others like the Clippers or Lakers, for example. Both teams are stronger where I am weakest, so we’ll keep an eye on them, too.

Based on our preseason results, I think we’ve got the season ahead that we wanted. Every team out west is poised to beat the piss out of each other, but we plan to be the ones dishing out the biggest beatings and absorbing the fewest.

We’re very excited for the 1982 season. Any questions?

[WigNosy]

Steve Duin, Portland Trailblazers beat writer for the Oregonian...

While everyone is focused on the Parish trade, a lot of people are sleeping on your Free Agency acquisitions; you brought in a lot of talent at fairly reasonable pricetags. Was depth a consideration for you in the offseason? What indicators helped you accurately read the market and get the guys you wanted?

[RPF]

Marc H. Morial, Englewood Press: What lessons were learned after making it to the conference finals and coming up short to the eventual champs?

[greepleairport]

Steve Duin, Portland Trailblazers beat writer for the Oregonian...

While everyone is focused on the Parish trade, a lot of people are sleeping on your Free Agency acquisitions; you brought in a lot of talent at fairly reasonable pricetags. Was depth a consideration for you in the offseason? What indicators helped you accurately read the market and get the guys you wanted?

Thank you for this question, as we did not do enough to highlight our signings this offseason. We retained James Bailey, who was hurt a good chunk of time last season, but when he hit the floor his play had improved tremendously from the prior season. Phil Ford was someone we hoped to retain, but were not surprised he got the payday he did from the Bucks, as he is a tremendous starting PG. Getting Mike Glenn back at his desired pay rate was a huge win for us, too.

The "steals," though, were our proudest moments.

We knew what a problem Bobby Jones was by facing him in the conference finals. He did very well shutting down our offense when we needed it most, so we're thrilled to welcome him to Golden State. Kenny Carr PRODUCED in Cleveland last year, and the year before, too. We scouted him for his rebounding abilities, first, and his offense, second. It hurt our feelings with a league leading rebounder like Moses that we were still giving up so many offensive boards, so adding a guy like Kenny to help with that was key to not give up any more second chance points.

How did we get them both at such reasonable price points? Well, either we got lucky, read the market correctly, or developed enough of a good reputation that when free agents saw the offer from the Malone-led Warriors, they signed, ready to win some games! We hope it's the latter.

Seriously though, we had a max offer on the table for Terry Tyler and ultimately decided, ya know what? EVERYONE will max this guy. And if we sign him? Our other offers could become null and we'd lack depth. So we pulled that offer off our table and slid a min to last year's backup PG, Eddie Jordan, freeing up cap to make all these other great deals possible.

[greepleairport]

Marc H. Morial, Englewood Press: What lessons were learned after making it to the conference finals and coming up short to the eventual champs?

Our biggest lesson was that we can't rely on one superstar to win it all. It certainly is possible, but seeing both Alex English AND Dan Roundfield across the court, we realized adding an additional top tier talent was essential.

What great timing it was when I realized the Bucks were blowing it all up! And we had top tier trade capital in Alton Lister! Again, I can't stress enough how tough it was to see Alton go, but I'm sure our fans understand the bigger vision - to win a title.

Lastly, we found ourselves needing to play our guys to the bone in tough matchups against the Suns AND Nuggets. This let us know that more depth was key if we wanted to beat teams like this the next year, so we sent our scouts out to the first big free agency period and told them to get to work rounding out our roster!

[Eazy P]

Your team looks great. Do you see this team dethroning the Nuggets as league champs when it's all said and done?

[greepleairport]

Your team looks great. Do you see this team dethroning the Nuggets as league champs when it's all said and done?

I sure hope so! I built this team with the loss to the Nuggets in mind...and I stole one of their players. I think that might rouse them a bit to come back and kick my ass again, but they're going to have a much, much harder time against me this year. The Malone/Parish tandem is undeniably brutal to any opponent.

[Mike Lowry]

You made the biggest earliest play of an eventful offseason. Tell us more about your feelings as more teams made solid moves to make themselves contenders?

[greepleairport]

You made the biggest earliest play of an eventful offseason. Tell us more about your feelings as more teams made solid moves to make themselves contenders?