Steve Patterson:
Hi folks, thanks for coming, I have to get back to the Rose Garden…I have a statement and then I’ll take some questions and then we will go from there. I think, as all of you are aware we made a decision yesterday not to extend John Nash’s contract into the future. We’ve also made the decision to pick up our option on Kevin Pritchard’s contract he’ll be back for another year and a half on his deal as player personnel director. I’ll be acting GM as we start our search for a new general manager for the ball club. Kevin will be one of the candidates for that position…Yesterday was a tough day, we have tough decisions that we have to make…in all businesses as we try to move forward. Last year we brought in a great new coach and new coaching staff and this is a part of this process of trying to remake this franchise back into a team that Portland can be proud of. It’s never easy to make these kinds of decisions, in some respects John had a thankless job here, but we do appreciate his efforts and thank him for that and everything he has done to try and reduce payroll, bring in character players, good young talent that we all feel will develop into a successful basketball team. So with that we will open it up for questions.

Download Trail Blazers Podcast to listen to the entire news conference.