Following the Luol Deng press conference, John Paxson met with the press to discuss the Ben Gordon signing. Here is a transcript of that meeting.

John Paxson: I’d like to be sitting up here with Ben shortly. If at all possible. But, there’s things to work through, just like there was things to work through in this type of deal with Luol, there are things to work through with Ben to get him signed. It always takes two sides to get a deal done. Both sides have to be comfortable with it or maybe a little bit uncomfortable with it to get the right deal, but in my opinion, this doesn’t have any bearing on what we’re doing with Ben. This one’s completed, and now we’ve been talking to Ben’s representatives throughout the whole process. I’m sure we will talk a little bit stronger now.

Reporter: With this deal done, and some of the other deals done with restricted free agents. For Ben Gordon, is the market sort of established now?

John Paxson: I think there’s a lot of things that come in determining what the market is. Position certainly plays a part in it. You see that with big guys. Luol is a legitimate three man; size, length, skill. Ben is a two guard and there’s differences, you can’t get around those. There’s still guys out there. Iguodala is out there. There’s still tings, but like I said what for me, it really comes back to, is do both sides want to get a deal done? We certainly do. I know Ben and his representatives, Raymond Brothers, want to get a deal done too. But right now, there are differences with how we’re looking at it. But we have time. No deadlines out there looming, we need to continue to work at it, keep it proffessional, keep it moving in the right direction. No one’s dug their heels in and that’s a good thing. So we will continue to talk about it.

K.C. Johnson: Even though they play different positions, how much did the Ellis, Biedrins, and Okafor signings play a part maybe in giving shape into the Deng deal.

John Paxson: Not that much to be honest with you. We all look at what other guys are signing for, but I think our approach all along has been Luol’s value to us. I do think that when you draft a young player, and Lu was 19 when we drafted him, and you invest a lot of time and energy into that player, it becomes important, maybe a little more important than how other teams view it. But we feel the same way about Ben Gordon. The other deals, I know in the broad picture you look at those things establishing the market, but maybe they do, maybe they don’t. We were definitely focused in doing the right thing, getting the right deal done for both sides.

Reporter: Do you feel a sense of urgency with Gordon now that it kind of determines what you do otherwise?

John Paxson: All of us would like to walk out of here today and have both of them done, but it doesn’t always work that way. None of us feel an urgency, we would like to get it done. We would like it to be a deal that’s good for Ben, good for us, and that’s ongoing.