For those who haven’t seen it, I’ll attach a link to the story about Mitch Kupchak’s interview, and I thought I would also attach some of the leftover quotes that didn’t make it into the story.
It was nice to be able to sit down and talk to Mitch today, during what has been a rough month for him, but I must admit that it was weird not to be able to ask him anything about Kobe. It’s the only question anyone wants to ask, but we couldn’t. I understand the reasoning, but it still felt awkward. Hopefully, you’ll get something out of this…
Lakers: Kupchak gets his words in
On whether this is the most challenging offseason he will face:
“Every offseason is challenging. Even when you win a championship, you’re challenged to either leave things they way they are and take a chance that you can come back and win with the same team next year, or make changes, whether you win or lose, and get back there next year. So every year is challenging. We do like the makeup of the team. We’re very pleased with our start this year. We’re not going to talk about injuries, because a lot of teams have injuries, but we were 26-13, I think, through the end of January. Then the injury bug hit us. We got healthy, but then we weren’t the same team, even when we got healthy. So I can’t blame it on injuries. The team showed they were capable of winning at a high rate. During the offseason, you look for opportunities to make a change. If you’re going to make a change, you would hope that you’re going to win at a better rate than the year before. But there are no guarantees and there is no magic wand that you can wave to make it happen.”
Part of a quote about what he took away from last season:
“It’s good to know that you have the talent to win games. You have to factor in the schedule, but it is good to know that you’re talented enough to win games. I know, based on my conversations in the last three or four weeks, that we have a lot of desirable players that other teams would like to have on their teams. We felt that the team underachieved last year. … Come February, we hit the skids. So the response would be to look to see why that happened and try to right the ship. We could stick with the group we have today, but there will be changes, I’ve told you that, or we could look to be aggressive and try to get to that next level. Either way, we think we’ll be a talented team next year.”
On having his trade talks complicated by media reports, etc.:
“I’d prefer not to deal that way. There’s nothing I can do about it. The environment is what it is. I’d prefer to deal not through the media, without the media knowing what I’m doing and who I’m calling and what we’re talking about. But I can’t control the environment.It’s a part of the landscape that being a GM revolves around in this day and age. It wasn’t this way 20 years ago. It just wasn’t. There wasn’t a (salary) cap, there wasn’t the Internet, there wasn’t sports radio. I mean, the guys on radio, I don’t listen often but the callers that call in and the guys with the show, 90 percent of what’s proposed can’t take place, even if the GMs agreed on it. … The real fans can go on the Internet, and there are Internet sites where you can play GM and you can actually read rules and guidelines, but most of the people aren’t going to do that. It’s just part of the landscape of being a general manager. I think it’s good, because I think people like to talk about trades and they like to talk about teams they’re passionate about, particularly in a big city.”
On the Lakers’ possible desire to re-sign Chris Mihm:
“When he got hurt last year, he was on course to have his career-best year numbers-wise. So if he can get back to the way he played a year ago before he got hurt, I don’t know why we wouldn’t want him back.”