I know you've been anxiously waiting, so without further adieu... Here's Larry!!!

Tim Kawakami: OK to the transcript, in which a lot of stuff got chopped out because I just couldn’t type everything…

-ROWELL INTRO: First of all, I would like to thank Chris Mullin for his last seven years of service for the Golden State Warriors organization…

I also want to thank our Warrior fans for their commitment and passion to this organization. They deserve better than what we’ve been able to deliver over the course of the last several seasons and we are committed to doing whatever it takes to win.

Ownership and Mr. Cohan have committed to providing us with the resources and are steadfast in doing so. Our goal is to win. Our goal is to be in the playoffs. Our entire organization’s committed to that.

We want to be playing basketball next May in this arena.

We’ve been to the playoffs one time in the last five years and that’s not acceptable. Our fans deserve better than that and we deserve the opportunity to get out there and win basketball games. And we’re going to do that.

We’ve committed too many resources over the course of the last several years not to do so. We’re going to continue to commit those resources and we’re going to expect that we win and that we provide our fans with the best entertainment and product on the floor.

This is a team that I think the focus here needs to go back on the players. Our players are the most important part of what we do. Our players win games, they make baskets, they defend. They help everyone do their job and our players need to be the focus of where we’re going as we move forward.

I’m here to formally introduce Larry Riley as the general manager of the Golden State Warriors. And I know a lot of you are probably sitting there going, ‘Well geez, this is just Don Nelson’s buddy. This is the guy who’s put in a position to be Nellie’s puppet.’

I’ve got to tell you, this is a gentleman I’ve had an opportunity to work with for the last three years. Spent a lot of time over the course of this last season and I have a lot of respect for him.

You’ve got to understand that I’ve got a 69-year-old head coach, in fact, he’ll be 69 on Friday. He’s been in the league for 45 years. He’s got over 30 years of experience as a coach. He’s got a .565 winning percentage. He’s going to be the winningest coach in the NBA with 24 wins next season.

And of course, yes, he’s quirky he’s unconventional, he’s stubborn. He hates to lose. But he’s a heckuva coach.

So when I’m looking at a person that I want to put in position to be our general manager, to lead our organization, I need someone that understands our coach and understands what’s necessary in order for us too provide him the tools to win…

I need someone who can communicate to our entire staff. I need someone who can talk to our players and to our coaches and to manage people. I need someone who knows what it’s like to be the best team in the Western Conference, someone who isn’t going to sacrifice tomorrow for today and develop young players. Someone who doesn’t like to lose, as well, and someone who understands the way we play.

Larry Riley has been an assistant with Don Nelson for eight seasons. He’s worked with Don for eight of the last nine seasons. Prior to that, he spent 12 years with two organizations where he was charged with building a roster, scouting players and managing people. This is the right guy to be our general manager. I’d like to present Larry Riley as the general manager of the Golden State Warriors.

-LARRY RILEY INTRO: First off, I’d like to express my gratitude to Chris Cohan and Robert Rowell and to the Warriors organization as a whole for showing the kind of confidence that they have shown in me and giving me this opportunity to go to work and be involved in an organization that I think has the potential to just be a very good one.

I’ve worked in three organizations. Milwaukee was a good organization, there’s no question about that. I worked in Vancouver—I’ll address that one in a minute because that one didn’t go quite so well. If any of you are thinking about going to work for an expansion team, uh, look for something else. There’s a better way.

And then of course I was in Dallas and worked with Nellie in Dallas for several years… Made the trek from Dallas out here with Nellie in a car, actually his truck, driving in that two-day thing that people have heard about where all we did was smoke cigars, chew tobacco and listen to George Jones…

I’m not nervous about this job. Some of you may think, ‘Well, who is this guy? Where’s he coming from? Does he really know what he’s doing?’ I don’t have a problem with that.

Now it’s up to you as people who evaluate, as people who try to report accurately, and I assume that most of you do. You’ll make your judgments as you go along. I’m in a position right now where I’ve been thrust into a situation where I’m going to required to make decisions and I don’t have any problems with doing that…

We’re going to take an approach to the next season that we’re going back after a playoff position and we’re going to be in the chase and that we’re going to make it real. We are not that far away…

I’m no longer an assistant coach. I’m going to sit upstairs and I’m going to make some decisions that will be popular in some instances and unpopular in others. I don’t care about that. We will collect information and we will make decisions.

If you look at the Utah franchise, for an example. Everybody says, well, they had John Stockton, Karl Malone and Ok, greatness comes along with that. Well, when those guys were gone, that system was able to stay in place and get back to being one of the models that you see in the NBA that’s successful.

Have an older coach in Jerry Sloan. They have a general manager in Kevin O’Connor who’s not afraid to make decisions. And they have business people who are involved in their decisions as well.

This is an approach that I think we are going to have to take. It’s an approach I’m going to take. Which is consulting with Nellie, with Robert Rowell on the business end of things, collecting information from out scouts, assistant coaches, and making decisions.

Some of you are going to say, Robert just said it, ‘Riley’s a puppet.’ That’s already out there. We were joined at the hip when we came here. Let’s not fool anybody about that nonsense.

Now, does Nellie dictate my life? No. Is he a good friend? Yes. Do I listen to him? Yes. If I have to make a counter-decision, I’ll make it, based on the information I collect. I don’t see that happening.

Some of you say, ‘Well, good luck.’ I understand that. But this stuff of, you know, ‘Don Nelson’s running the organization.” I talked to him again last night.

He told me over and over and over again, ‘I have no interest in being general manager. I want to coach the team. That’s what I’ve got left. And that’s what I want to do.’ We’re very comfortable with each other, obviously.

There’s always going to be a lot of talk about the attachment between me, Del Harris and Don Nelson. Some of it’s accurate. Some of it that I’ve seen is not accurate at all. But that’s the kind of thing that doesn’t make that much difference…

Now when you come out of here, you may say, ‘Well, Riley didn’t say anything except we know now that he’s mastered the obvious.’ Well, OK, so be it. We have a draft to conduct this summer and I’m not going to be discussing draft picks, nobody does that, anyway.

I don’t mind telling you we will have failed if we don’t get to the playoffs before I’m done here. And if we don’t get to the playoffs soon, I won’t be here that long. We all know that. And that’s OK. That’s what this business is all about.

We’re going to get to the playoffs soon. And we’re going to continue to play exciting basketball, and we’re going to give our fans some real enjoyment as we go forward.

-Q: What made you so confident that Riley could move from assistant coach to GM in this short time?

-ROWELL: Over the course of the last three years, I’ve gotten an opportunity to watch Larry. You probably don’t know this, but he’s been instrumental in our D-League findings.

And I think that’s one of his strengths, to be able to find talent, young skill, have a good feel as to who will fit into our system and play Nellie’s style of basketball. I think it has resulted in some pretty favorable decisions on our part. I think we’ve done one of the better jobs in the league in the D-League.

Also, his communication style. There’s a way in which he interacts with our staff and in which he interacts with our players. This is a people business. We’ve got 14, 15 guys on our roster, we need to be able to talk to them…

I think that from our standpoint… he’s the right fit.

-Q: Will you add to your front-office staff? Where does Larry Harris fit in that?

-RILEY: All of that stuff has been under the process of evaluation… We’re close to making some decisions on that. Obviously, this is the first day. But have we been thinking about it? Sure we have. And I have some ideas that are not conclusive yet, but it will not take long before they become conclusive.

You asked specifically about Larry Harris. I don’t know what his role will be as we go into the future. Most of you know that he played for me at Eastern New Mexico University and there’s another tie back to Del Harris. You know, it kind of looks like a family thing.

But the guy has value. There’s no question that he understands the league and understands the NBA. There’s several people in the organization that are being evaluated and we’re close to making some decisions on.

-Q: Will you have final say on the draft?

-RILEY: Yes. Robert and I have had discussions on that. I’ll make basketball decisions. He’ll be involved in business decisions and we’ll come together on that. Somebody will come back and say, ‘Who has the hammer, who has the clout?’

We’ve been able to work through that this last winter for example in trades that could’ve happened and didn’t, for whatever reason.

But I’ll make the draft picks and I’ll make the trade decisions and I will seek input from everybody that I can get to within reason.

-Q: Can you explain the timing of this—why now, not earlier or later?

-ROWELL: That’s kind of an ironic question. I’ve spent… first of all, decisions like this are not easy to make. Seven years ago I worked pretty hard to bring Chris back into the organization here. Any time you deal with situations that affect people that you have developed friendships and relationships with, it makes it tough. But this also is a business…

Decisions aren’t made quickly… You take your time. And you do the right thing. And you don’t just do things because people think you should be doing things the way they want you to be doing them.

-Q: Is Mullin still working for the team through July 1?

-ROWELL: He has some responsibilities right now. In fact, he’s working on something for me right now as we speak. We had a great meeting last week and I laid out some things that I’d like him to do. He was very amicable. I wish Chris nothing but the absolute best and will do whatever I have to do and can do to help him in his quest for his next position.

-Q: Will he be involved in the draft?

-ROWELL: He’s with us through June 30.

-Q: You’ve dropped the executive VP title. What’s the reason for that?

-ROWELL: I think it’s 50-50 across the league, if you take a look at what you call the person in that position. And really, titles are just titles. It’s the functions and the duties and the responsibilities of that particular position that are important. There really wasn’t a whole lot of thought on my end, other than this gentleman next to me is going to be our next general manager.

-Q: You said one playoff berth in five seasons is not acceptable. For you, it’s about one in nine. For Chris Cohan, it’s been one in 15. At what point is the responsibility put on your shoulders or your owner’s?

-ROWELL: Sure. Good question. This is my sixth season as president of the organization. (TK: He was chief operating officer for two years prior to that and VP-business operations for two years before that. That’s 10 total years as a Cohan’s top business bigwig.)

And I’m accountable on a daily basis to how we perform and how we do business. And there’s no one that likes to lose and no one that takes it harder than I take it.

As far as my accountability, I’ve judged and evaluated by my boss. And he has a set of criteria that he obviously uses.

As far as one in five years not being acceptable… three years ago, we had the eighth-best record in the West. Two years ago we had the ninth-best record in the West. Last year we had the 10th-best record in the West. And our fans deserve better than that and we’re going to fix that. That’s my job, that’s my charge, and that’s why we’re going the direction that we’re going in and we’re focused and committed to winning.

-Q: Where are the season-ticket sales right now? Are they way off? Better than expected?

-ROWELL: Our season-tickets right now are lower than where they were last year. You guys know me well enough, I don’t give numbers. Last year we had our highest season-ticket number in franchise history over the last 12 years. We’re off, but I also expect us to be back on track by the time we start the season.

-Q: Larry, what’s your general plan for the team?

-RILEY: I don’t anticipate shaking this team up to the point where you don’t recognize it next year. I anticipate maybe one or two moves to give us some help.

We are a very young team. At one time last year we had the youngest roster in the league. I think adding a veteran would be very helpful to us. Obviously we’re going to add another young guy in the draft. So there needs to be some balance there, some maturity and some leadership would be very helpful to us.

Needs to be a quality player. It doesn’t do any good to go acquire a guy who is older, mature, and going to be your 12th man. I don’t see that working for us. It does work sometimes for other teams. But I don’t see that working for us.

-Q: Do you see Monta Ellis as a point guard?

-RILEY: That’s going to be Nellie’s decision. I know he wants to play him there as much as he can next year. It will depend on how things unfold and how training camp goes and also depend on who we might draft or we might trade for. I’m happy Monta at this stage from the standpoint that he’s in a good mental state right now. I think he’s going to come back without issue…

-Q: Can you talk about how much you agree or disagree with Nelson’s style?

-RILEY: The basic philosophy is the same. I embrace the style that Don Nelson has used for years. I think it’s the way to play this game to provide the best opportunity for players to show what they can do and then along with that it provides a very entertaining evening of basketball. So far as a system is concerned, we’re together of that…

That’s the thing I’m comfortable with Nellie about this. Everybody thinks he’s going to ram everything down everybody else’s throat. And I find him very, very… not easy to work with… but in many instances very flexible.

Now have there been instances where he wanted to do something that I didn’t like and it got done anyway? Yeah. Yeah. We’ve got both sides of that.

-Q: For Larry—do you have the authority to fire Don?

-RILEY: (Laughs.) I haven’t even thought it that far.

-Q: To Bobby—does Larry have the authority to fire Don?

-ROWELL: Those are personnel issues and I don’t get into that in public.

-Q: Bobby, did you consider any other GM candidates?

-ROWELL: Yes.

-Q: What was the timing?

-ROWELL: Throughout the year.

-Q: Who were the candidates?

-ROWELL: Again, my list is going to remain my list.

-Q: Were they outside the organization?

-ROWELL: Yes.

-Q: You’ve got a 69-year-old coach, yet the players who form the core of your roster probably won’t be in their primes for another few years. Have you thought about how the future of this team can be directed by him?

-ROWELL: I wish I had a crystal ball to tell you exactly how long Nellie wants to continue to coach and how long we want him to continuing to coach past the next two seasons.

What I can say is we’re going to play the style of basketball that we’re playing and that we have played and will continue to play, moving forward under Don, and if and when we decide to make changes and or groom new people into a potential position as a coach, we’re going to have the same philosophy in mind.

-Q: This wasn’t just a personnel move, this was the removal of a Bay Area icon in Chris Mullin… Do you worry about the credibility of your organization when you axe someone the fans loved?

-ROWELL: We didn’t axe anyone.

-Q: Removed.

-ROWELL: He was under contract and it expired. He fulfilled his obligations under his contract and we appreciate that. And in business you have to make decisions and when you make those decisions and you move forward. And I think I outlined earlier as to why we made those decisions, to make a move and go in a different direction.

As far as our credibility’s concerned, we have to win. Bottom line, this organization needs to win basketball games and to put a product out there that wins games. And until it wins games, you can always have that question in your mind.

-Q: Larry’s a pretty unknown guy. Is there a worry about not having a higher-profile guy in that job?

-ROWELL: It’s an interesting question, but I will also tell you, and I don’t know how many people know this, but the gentleman who was the executive of the year this year in the NBA was Mark Warkentein, from Denver. You don’t need to be a big name per se to do a good job. And Mark has, like Larry, a lot of years of experience. Some being the No. 2, some being the No. 1.

And in this business, you’ve got to get a chance to be No. 1, and that’s Larry’s opportunity right now. He’s got a chance to seize that.

END

JV: Jeez, I’ve never heard an intro with “And I know a lot of you are probably sitting there going, ‘Well geez, this is just Don Nelson’s buddy. This is the guy who’s put in a position to be Nellie’s puppet.”



JV: Did anyone find anything good to take from all this???!!!???!!!

 

This guy is Looney Toones. He deserves to be fired for that comment alone

 

No. If anything I'm even more scared. I very clearly see more years of mediocrity and frustration ahead with these clowns in charge. I'll reserve judgement on Riley for a while, but Cohan and Rowell have proved over and over again that they don't know what they're doing and have no business running a pro sports team, so nothing has changed.

 

He said he was going to talk about what happened in Vancouver, did I miss that part?

I got the sense, not from reading it but from hearing clips, that he is going to drastically change the direction of the team. I hope not but I get the feeling we're going to be givign away a lot of you talent for not much in return. I hope not, but that's the feeling I got.

 

I don't know, I thought it was a decent intro by Riley. You guys should view the entire press conference on YouTube. I thought he said all the right things (safe things) without any cause for concern or panic. The fact is, they are one or two moves away from being a good team. It's just a matter of how they make those moves and how it affects the future of the Warriors financial situation.

 

I think that this team is FAR from being a night in night out competitor. EVERY team in the NBA is 1 or 2 moves away from being a good team (not a great team). People need to challenge these guys. Saying that the team is going to look to add a veteran and somehow that's going to fix everything is way off base IMO.

What I would like to hear him say is that this team has a lot of needs and is overloaded in some positions, and it's overloaded in youth, so we're going to be aggressive and entertain all offers to balance out the team both position and age. If you are happy with the roster that Mullin put together, then why let him walk? Also, he in no way mentions the Cap handcuffs that Jax, Craw, and Magette have put us in, and that he's looking to move a contract and get back one that fits the roster better.

 

http://www.nba.com/warriors/video/2009/05/13/RileyPC_576.nba/index.html

Is there any president of a pro sports team who talks more about his team as a business than Rowell? Where others may say team, win games, compete for a championship, etc. He just says, improve our business.

I can see Rowell's thought process clearly now after watching this interview: "Fun time out or winning? Fun time out every day. It's our business!" haha This press conference exhibits exactly why this organization is such a joke.

Some of the questions were really good. The answers were lesser of quality. How many young teams have added a 12th man vet and succeeded? Granted Riley said he wasn't going to do this, but he did say other teams have been successful doing this, but I couldn't think of any. When have you disagreed with Nelson? I have, but I'm not going to tell you, haha.

Finally, I like Don Nelson as head coach and tried to defend him last season some. But I strongly disagree with this GM choice and direction of the organization. I suppose it's still better than the Mike Montgomery saga, but come on. I think now would be a great time for Nelson to retire. He's always debating quitting each August anyway. Save him the decision and make it for him (all of this is retrospect now).

 

CH, of course. It's easy for me to say they're one or two moves away from being a good team because in my fantasy world, I see the Warriors pulling off these moves like I do in NBA 2K9

I guess the Warriors, as bad as they are, teased me enough into thinking that this train wreck could be cleaned up with a broom. It's the ambitious, hopeless Warrior-fan in me. Please forgive.