interviews

As most people are aware of, we had an early start to our training camp, due to the international games played in Japan having to be canceled beacause of the disaster that was experienced in New York and around our country. As a consequence, we've had a few days earlier to start. We're actually in our 15th day.

We've had a number of operations in the offseason to our players, which is not unusual for a championship or playoff team to have operations in the offseason. Shaquille O'Neal, Derek Fisher and Mark Madsen are players were hoping will return to the lineup soon. Shaquille is on the practice floor now and will play at some point during the exhibition season.

This summer, we acquired a couple of big guys to replace Horace Grant, who was lost in the free agent market to Orlando. We replaced him with Samaki Walker and Jelani McCoy, two players we signed in the free agent market to fill that position.

We're also looking for someone to start in place of Derek Fisher. We made an offseason acquisition of Lindsey Hunter in trade for Greg Foster with Milwaukee. Right now, he's been a solid player for us at the point guard position. The other acquisition, Mitch Richmond at the shooting guard, is coming along slowly but surely. We've been working more on conditioning with Mitch, just getting him in position to have a solid season, health-wise.

After two exhibition games in Hawaii, where we started our training camp, we've had a week layoff in between what were to be two games in Japan, and now we resume our exhibition schedule this next week and finish the week with two in San Diego and Las Vegas.

Q: Would there have been enough basketballs for Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant to play together in the triangle if Michael had accepted your standing offer to come play for you?

Jackson: Well, yes. I've never had any problem with finding a way for players to play together in this type of offense, simply because it's an offense in which choices are made by the players to play with each other and it's not done by calls from the coach from the sideline. So yes, Michael would have found a way to play.

I think he really wanted to inspire his club. The Wizards are playing with new inspiration and I think that was his plan all along, to try to teach these young men something about intensity and competitiveness from actual hands-on experience and, I think in that regard, it's been a great experience for him, even if it isn't a total success as far as wins and losses this season.

Q: You have anywhere from six to eight new players on you roster this season. Does that mean your in the process of rebuilding on the fly around Shaq and Kobe the way you rebuilt the Bulls in between the two three-peats?

Jackson: In a fashion, I would say that's accurate. Our problem in the NBA right now is due to salary cap restraints and the new kind of CBA agreement between the players and the owners. Shaq is grandfathered in the old cap structure so obviously, he puts tremendous burden and limitations cap-wise on our team, so we can't do anything else othere than rebuild every year around Shaq and Kobe and our very adequate support players like Robert Horry, Rick Fox and Derek Fisher, etc., and try to replace players like Ron Harper and Horace Grant that played for us, with experienced players that can give us some leadership and knowledge to play in playoff situations. This year, we've come up with a little younger version, but hopefully more athletic.

Jackson: We made a choice that we had to find somebody to replace Isaiah and Ron Harper, who we had two great years with, with somebody that was reliable, and we felt could be here every day and fill that role in a way we had confidence in that guy being here every day. We gave Isaiah the opportunity this summer to come play for our summer league team, to show us by good faith that he was going to be into it and responsible to this organization and he couldn't fulfill that, so we felt that was an indication that he wasn't ready to be that player for us.

Jackson: We had a very competitive year last year. I know it didn't look like it in the playoffs, obviously because we hit a stride and played very well, probably as well as any team has in the playoffs. We know that the regulare season is a grind. It's something that you have to go out and face the season with the apprehension of how we can put ourselves in the best position to enter the playoffs with good health, a nice situation where we're sitting with homecourt advantage. We were fortunate last year that our run put us into that situation all the way through, except our series with San Antonio. We have a very difficult conference to go through. It will be as difficult as it was last year. End