Catching Up with Mitch Kupchak: Part I
by Nick Kioski
September 27th, 2007

Lakers.com caught up with General Manager Mitch Kupchak to discuss the 2007-08 Lakers as they head into training camp next week. Read Part II here.

Has Kobe reached out to you and Phil and other teammates?
I don't know if he speaks to his teammates, I assume that he does. I know that he and Phil have communicated and Kobe and I have also communicated, recently.

Who looks most improved to you as a result of their off-season workouts?
It's always hard to tell by looking at guys in pick-up games. All our guys work hard during the off-season. I know that physically people will see a difference in Andrew (Bynum) because he worked hard during the off-season on his body and his conditioning. Whether or not that translates into being a better basketball player we'll find out starting next week. I know Chris Mihm has worked very hard and he looks close to being the same player he was 2 years ago. I don't worry about Luke Walton, I don't worry about Kobe, and I don't worry about Fisher. I don't worry about Jordan Farmar and I don't worry about Cook.

Ronny Turiaf played with his national team, France, for the European Championships and I am little bit concerned that he will be a little burned out when the pre-season begins. He played well this summer, but he played a lot of minutes. I was hoping that he'd get some rest before camp. It remains to be seen.

Kwame had recovered from his 2 off-season surgeries and has been playing very well for the last month of so here at the facility. I don't worry about Maurice Evans. He's in San Antonio during the off-season.

Lamar had the second surgery on his labrum and he's not scrimmaging yet and he's not doing a whole lot on the basketball court so I don't know how much he'll participate in training camp. He'll be there; he'll be on the court. But is he scrimmaging or is he working at the side basket doing dummy offense and dummy defense, we don’t know right now.

Most of our guys, when they're in town, come by and they're in the gym. Some of our guys live in L.A. and they're always in the gym. With the exception of Lamar, because of his injury, everybody is ready to go and they look good.

When a player goes to someone else to do an off-season work-out either for conditioning or for basketball, is that coordinated with our staff? Or is it totally separate and they're trying to get a third party perspective on their game?
It depends. The collective bargaining agreement only allows for us to have so much control over players during the off-season. Basically, if they wanted no control or no involvement with us, they could get it. But most of our players reach out to us. If they do hire a third party to work them out then we're in the loop. We coordinate, we tell them what we do and we ask them what they do. From time to time we would send somebody out to monitor to make sure they don't do anything so different from what we do. We stay on top of it as best we can, considering we don’t have any off-season leverage. With the exception maybe of a player who is rehabilitating from injury, then we can pretty much be more forceful in terms of (focusing on) rehabilitation vs. off-season workouts. Veterans have a routine and you don't worry about them as much, and when I say a veteran, I mean a guy who's been in the league 6 or 7 years and he knows what to do. We have some young veterans on this team that are still learning what to do during the off-season, because they are still growing into adults.

Where is Javaris' development compared to a typical rookie?
Too early to tell. We thought he had a good summer league and he has played well out here in pick-up games, but that is totally different than what he's going to be exposed to starting next season in Hawaii. We are pleased to have him, we didn't think we would be able to get him at 19, we thought he'd be gone in the top 15. He shows flashes of being a true point guard, which is a player that makes the other players around him better. He looks to make a pass first, although he can score, but that is not what he looks to do first.

Does he seem to have gelled well and gotten a good understanding of the other guys' games?
Too early to tell. When they start playing with Kobe and Lamar, everything is going to change. Those are our 2 go to guys, offensively, defensively, they're leaders on the team and neither one of them has played with any of these guys this summer. It's way too early to tell. We'll get a feel next week when Kobe and the rest of guys play together for the first time. And it's going to be a while before Lamar gets to play, it might be 3 to 4 weeks before complete involvement.

What does Javaris need to do at training camp to do to get a spot in the regular rotation?
I know he has those kinds of goals. Maybe he wants to start, maybe he wants to be in the rotation; I would assume he wants to play this year. I would hope that he'd have those types of goals, but I think he should concentrate on doing what the coaches want him to do, learn the offense, learn our terminology, our defensive strategy and I think the rest of it will fall into place. I don't think he should get too caught up in how many minutes he needs to play right away. He's going to have a long long career in this league.

Read Part II here