Q & A: Vice President of Basketball Operations Elgin Baylor

Baylor addresses the team's offseason progress, Shaun Livingston's development, Elton Brand's participation with USA Basketball, trade rumors surrounding Corey Maggette and more.

Q: Just a little over a month before training camp, how do you rate the summer’s progress, so far?
A: We went into the summer with several goals, and so far, we’ve been fortunate enough to have accomplished the key ones. Bringing Sam Cassell back and acquiring Tim Thomas were critical moves to ensure that we can continue the team’s growth off of last year’s success. And we think that Aaron Williams will give us some experience and depth in the middle. We got a lot done, but you never stop trying to improve.

Q: How do you see Shaun Livingston fitting in this year, his third in the NBA?
A: I expect Shaun to pick right up where he left off. Shawn’s development is advantaged by Sam’s return as much as the team. I see Shaun playing significant minutes and having a big impact, pushing the ball and getting it to one of the great finishers we have, such as Cuttino Mobley and Corey Maggette. This summer, Shaun is spending hours in the gym every day working on his perimeter shooting.

Q: Speaking of Maggette: for some reason, his name keeps surfacing in trade rumors. Is there anything on that you can share with Clippers.com?
A: Sometimes the rumors are just ridiculous. In this case, it’s clear that they’re coming strictly from people who don’t know what’s really going on. Just to set the record straight: we are not trading Maggette.

Q: Have you been monitoring the players’ offseason conditioning programs?
A: Absolutely. Several of the players have spent the summer in Los Angeles and have been working out together at our practice facility, so we see them pretty much on a daily basis. Elton Brand, as everybody knows, has been competing with Team USA, so we know that he’ll be in great shape when training camp rolls around. All of the players have spent some time this summer working on their assigned programs. Our guys are very good about offseason conditioning.

Q: Does Brand’s participation with USA Basketball make the team a little nervous that he might suffer an injury?
A: It is extremely important to Elton to take advantage of the opportunity to represent his country and help to elevate the American game around the world. Is it a concern? It has to be a concern for every team that has a player participating, but Elton knows how to take care of himself, and with such a deep roster, the individual players are playing fairly limited minutes.

Q: Are you looking forward to this upcoming season?
A: Probably more than any other. We really had it going during the post-season last year, and I think that experience will really help us going into this year. Everybody expects us to be even better – our sales have been tremendous this summer, so it’s obvious that the excitement level and the anticipation is high. That goes for me too, even more.