Rudy T. Teleconference

Opening Statement: We broke camp several days ago from Austin, Texas. Just a big contrast from where we are this year from last year. Last year we broke camp with seven or eight healthy bodies. Mo Taylor was already out for the year. Even though we do have some minor aches and pains, things that have kept guys out of games, our health is a lot better. I'm excited about getting Mo Taylor and Glen Rice back. Both guys played in the game last night against San Antonio. Both did well. We had a year, last year, where three consecutive games was the longest after the first couple weeks of the season that we had the same playing rotation. I think five games in a row was the most we had the same starting lineup. So hopefully all that kind of stuff is behind us. I really feel that I have a team that can compete for a playoff spot. We still haven't even seen our first-round pick. What I have seen already is our guys have really been working hard on improving our defense. We're also trying to put in more of a five-man offensive set. We will go to a lot of our basic NBA things that take advantage of players, but I would like to get a more movement-type of offense in this year.

Q: How is Yao Ming progressing and how do you think he is going to be a factor in your team's success this year?

Tomjanovich: Well, number one, he's not here right now. We expect him soon. His mother came in a couple of days ago. She attended a practice. We think that things will get completed very soon. He's going to go through things that no one else has before and there're a lot of difficult situations he's going to have to deal with. First of all, coming in and not being around the team and not knowing any of the stuff we're doing. Then you put on top with that a new language, new country, new teammates and then the media attention of being the No. 1 pick in the league. This guy is going to be bombarded with a lot of things. It won't be easy, especially being behind. But my feeling, being around the kid some, is that he really has an even temperament, very positive sort of a -- just work and do the best you can. He's been in the spotlight for many years because of his stature there in China. If anybody can do it, I think he's got a good chance of handling those things. As far as how much I'm going to use him right at the beginning, I'm just going to play that by ear. They worked out three months preparing for the World Championship and I had seen him during that period. Then after that he went back and played in the Asian Championship, so he really hasn't had any off-time at all. Physically I have to see where he's at, and mentally, because we have so much new stuff here. We're just going to try to pace him really.

Q: You seem to have a lot of depth and the three and the four positions. Could you talk about what the rotation is going to look like there and specifically Eddie Griffin and the progress he has made from his rookie year to this season?

Tomjanovich: Yes, we do have an abundance of forwards and really good players. Kenny Thomas had a great year last year. He's a pretty tough guy to guard because he can put the ball on the floor and attack the basket and draw fouls. Mo Taylor is just a guy who has a knack of getting the ball in the basket from 15 and 18 feet and then just putting it on the floor. Eddie is a little bit of everything. He can make three-pointers. We can send him inside more. One of the things we're going to do is we will try big lineups with Kenny Thomas playing the small forward. He is athletic enough where we think he can slide with most of the threes, but then there's going to be a match-up problem for them on the other end. What they've been doing is putting the three on Eddie and he's been doing a pretty good job of posting up on those guys. So we're going to try to go with some big lineups, some small lineups. The rotations are going to get even tighter when Yao Ming gets here because I have been using Eddie as a sort of a backup center. Most of the backup centers in the league really are sort of four players so we're going to have a lot of guys that can play and that's probably going to be my biggest challenge this year; trying to make this thing work and keep people happy.

Q: Can you talk about your other first-round pick, Bostjan Nachbar, and what you like about him?

Tomjanovich: He's a kid I saw over in the Euro League Championships and played on the team that had [Nikoloz] Tskitishvili also. He's a young player. In the visit I had there, there was a scrimmage. They were getting ready for the championships and there were 10 NBA scouts or coaches in the stands. Their coach Mike D'Antoni said, "I'm glad you guys are here because I know we're going to have a real hard practice because the NBA really gets those guys pumped up." And in that scrimmage, Nachbar had 10 dunks mostly on the fast break, knifing-type plays. But then I watched a lot of tape on the kid after that and he's a pretty versatile offensive player. He can make outside shots, can flip the ball over his head when he's posted up. He can just do a lot of things like some of the other guys in the NBA. He isn't quite the shooter of a [Peja] Stojakovic, but probably a better driver. He did have a setback -- he had a hernia operation. It really slowed down his conditioning and his strength. He is a college-age kid; he would be a senior in college right now. Like most of these young players coming in, even the American players need a lot of weight work for their strength. He's just a little bit behind schedule and that injury has affected his agility only in that we haven't seen the flying dunks. It's just something he's going to have to work through. Those things take a little time. We're happy with him and understand that he has had to have some kind of adjustment period.

Q: About the Lakers, how would you build a team offensively or defensively to defeat that team?

Tomjanovich: I think if you're trying to build a team, you just take what's available. You've got your draft, your free agents or trades. There're probably a lot of different philosophies on what you think you've got to do to beat them. I've got a young team and we beat them once a couple years ago. The tactics we tried to do was to try to bring Shaq out on the floor. I think if you match up with a guy that's just an inside player against them, Shaq's going to win any matchup against most centers in the league, and really every center in the league. If you can make him play on the outside, he does have to come out. What he does when he's playing a post-up guy is that he takes everything else away from your drivers and other guys so, that's the way I sort of look at it. It hasn't hurt because I don't have that kind of a team yet, but the game that we did beat them, Hakeem [Olajuwon] and our backup center Jason Collier both had about 14 points by making him try to defend out on the floor.