New players will help us move forward

By Larry Bird | Aug. 14, 2009

From the draft, we added Tyler Hansbrough from North Carolina in the first round and A.J. Price from Connecticut in the second. From the free-agent market, we've signed veterans Dahntay Jones, Earl Watson and Solomon Jones. We also re-signed one of our rising young talents, Josh McRoberts.

I couldn't be more pleased than to have a young man with the talent and character Tyler has. He sort of reminds me of when I came out. There was always this skepticism that we wouldn't be able to play in this league against these players. His future is going to be filled with nothing but accolades.

Earl is a strong defender and leader at point guard, Dahntay can guard all three positions on the perimeter and Solomon is a talented young forward-center who will bring shot-blocking and rebounding inside.

There are a couple of common threads with our new players: defense and energy.

We know we're going to score plenty of points but on the defensive end we've got to get much, much better as a team. When you add players that are very good defenders and take pride in that end of the floor, you're going to improve.

Jimmy O'Brien talks about the players taking ownership of the defense. These new guys will help everybody buy into that mindset.

I like energy guys. I like guys that play hard and get after it on defense because when they come to practice they raise everybody's intensity. As competitive as we were last season, we should be even more so this year and hopefully we'll come up with some more stops in those clutch situations.

In Indiana, young kids grow up and play the game the right way. They leave their hearts on the floor and they have a passion for the game. That's the kind of team we're putting together.