Post by DarthVegito on Aug 29, 2014 10:34:25 GMT -6
*A very stern looking Darth Vegito walks out of the double doors and sits down in front of the mic. Behind him walks out Penny Hardaway, Jon Barry, Marc Jackson, Roy Tarpley, and Arvydas Sabonis. They all take a seat at the table. The players even have this look of serious determination like they were just given the speech of a lifetime. Darth Vegito taps the mic.*
Darth Vegito: Good morning everyone and thank you all for coming. I realize we are one the last teams to hold our presser and I do apologize, but we have been very hard at work and time has been difficult to come by. Look, I'm not going to hold any extravagant press conference or steal any trophies this year. I came across a stat during the offseason that didn't sit well with me. The Dallas Mavericks have lost the most playoff games since this league was created. You can find positive and negative to focus on when thinking about that stat. Yes, besides the 4 teams that have won championships, we are probably the "most decorated" when it comes to accomplishments. 2 Finals appearances, 3 division titles....that stat means we've played on lots of playoff games. Which is always a good thing. But I can't help but focus on the negative. We've lost in the finals twice. Sure we may have been huge underdogs both times, running into the then current juggernauts of the league, but that doesn't make it acceptable. We have put together very talented teams almost every year, teams that are year in year out called "contenders". Yet we have no hardware.
Once again this year, we made several moves. The salary cap is always looming, and we want to be a very proactive team when it comes to keeping a close eye on our finances. No I won't sacrifice a contender in order to not pay a tax, but I think both can be done. I mean our neighbors in Houston are a prime example of what out of control spending looks like. In the offseason we made some moves that some liked and some didn't understand, but all in the thought of improving this team's chances of contending once again.
We have two returning starters, Penny and Arvydas. Arvydas will continue to be the anchor to this team. He made huge strides in training camp and although he is older than your average sophomore, he will be one of the league's more balanced big men this year. Penny is of course the heart and soul of this team. He has always had tons of pressure from his first game till now. We wanted to alleviate a little bit of that pressure this season. That is why we brought in Marc Jackson to run the point this year. He will do a majority of the ball handling so that Penny can focus on things like scoring and defense a bit more. You can expect to see a slight decrease on the stat sheet for Penny as he will be playing the 3 and going up against players closer to his size. With that being said, we fully expect him to dominate as he has for the past three years.
The two other major moves were signing Jon Barry away from Toronto, and trading Reggie Miller to New York for Tarpley and Piatkowski. We expect Barry and Roy to play significant roles on both sides of the floor. Roy also brings tons of experience as he's played along side The Admiral for so many years. Piat and Elliot will play our six man roles. Penny I believe you had something wanted to share?
Penny: Thanks Darth. Yah I wanted to share a conversation I had with these guys when we all out to dinner one night. It started off being about how we all felt blessed to be the NBA. But then the convo changed to our accomplishments in the NBA. And to my surprise the new players(Jon, Roy, and Marc) were really ecstatic about playing for the Mavericks. They were happy about leaving the Eastern Conference. And I was taken back by that. I asked them, "Why on earth would you happy about moving to a much much tougher conference?" They summed it up with one word. "Validation" They said that the Mavericks have done more and gotten further than their previous teams in a much tougher conference. They said that a ECF appearance is handed to one team every year and that they still could not reach the finals. They started then to talk about how their previous coaches sucked and how they couldn't seem to put it together when it mattered the most. That's when I told them that yes Dallas is a better organization than those others, but don't forget that we've yet to reach the mountain top. Our goal is not the Finals, our goal is to win the Finals. To win the elusive championship. Then we all bought another round of shots on Jon's tab since he just got paid!! Lol
Darth Vegito: Thank you for sharing that with us Penny. The floor is now open to anyone. You may also ask any of the starters some questions as well.
Also I just wanted to mention that we will be unveiling this season's team mantra poster a bit later in the day. I think you'll enjoy it.
Questions???
Darth Vegito: Good morning everyone and thank you all for coming. I realize we are one the last teams to hold our presser and I do apologize, but we have been very hard at work and time has been difficult to come by. Look, I'm not going to hold any extravagant press conference or steal any trophies this year. I came across a stat during the offseason that didn't sit well with me. The Dallas Mavericks have lost the most playoff games since this league was created. You can find positive and negative to focus on when thinking about that stat. Yes, besides the 4 teams that have won championships, we are probably the "most decorated" when it comes to accomplishments. 2 Finals appearances, 3 division titles....that stat means we've played on lots of playoff games. Which is always a good thing. But I can't help but focus on the negative. We've lost in the finals twice. Sure we may have been huge underdogs both times, running into the then current juggernauts of the league, but that doesn't make it acceptable. We have put together very talented teams almost every year, teams that are year in year out called "contenders". Yet we have no hardware.
Once again this year, we made several moves. The salary cap is always looming, and we want to be a very proactive team when it comes to keeping a close eye on our finances. No I won't sacrifice a contender in order to not pay a tax, but I think both can be done. I mean our neighbors in Houston are a prime example of what out of control spending looks like. In the offseason we made some moves that some liked and some didn't understand, but all in the thought of improving this team's chances of contending once again.
We have two returning starters, Penny and Arvydas. Arvydas will continue to be the anchor to this team. He made huge strides in training camp and although he is older than your average sophomore, he will be one of the league's more balanced big men this year. Penny is of course the heart and soul of this team. He has always had tons of pressure from his first game till now. We wanted to alleviate a little bit of that pressure this season. That is why we brought in Marc Jackson to run the point this year. He will do a majority of the ball handling so that Penny can focus on things like scoring and defense a bit more. You can expect to see a slight decrease on the stat sheet for Penny as he will be playing the 3 and going up against players closer to his size. With that being said, we fully expect him to dominate as he has for the past three years.
The two other major moves were signing Jon Barry away from Toronto, and trading Reggie Miller to New York for Tarpley and Piatkowski. We expect Barry and Roy to play significant roles on both sides of the floor. Roy also brings tons of experience as he's played along side The Admiral for so many years. Piat and Elliot will play our six man roles. Penny I believe you had something wanted to share?
Penny: Thanks Darth. Yah I wanted to share a conversation I had with these guys when we all out to dinner one night. It started off being about how we all felt blessed to be the NBA. But then the convo changed to our accomplishments in the NBA. And to my surprise the new players(Jon, Roy, and Marc) were really ecstatic about playing for the Mavericks. They were happy about leaving the Eastern Conference. And I was taken back by that. I asked them, "Why on earth would you happy about moving to a much much tougher conference?" They summed it up with one word. "Validation" They said that the Mavericks have done more and gotten further than their previous teams in a much tougher conference. They said that a ECF appearance is handed to one team every year and that they still could not reach the finals. They started then to talk about how their previous coaches sucked and how they couldn't seem to put it together when it mattered the most. That's when I told them that yes Dallas is a better organization than those others, but don't forget that we've yet to reach the mountain top. Our goal is not the Finals, our goal is to win the Finals. To win the elusive championship. Then we all bought another round of shots on Jon's tab since he just got paid!! Lol
Darth Vegito: Thank you for sharing that with us Penny. The floor is now open to anyone. You may also ask any of the starters some questions as well.
Also I just wanted to mention that we will be unveiling this season's team mantra poster a bit later in the day. I think you'll enjoy it.
Questions???
