Rob Babcock Quotations

There are certainly a lot of bugs to be ironed out, but it's a good step in the right direction.

Waiving a player never is easy, because you essentially are firing someone, ... But looking at our team, this was the most logical choice.

Of course I'm still pulling for (the Raptors).

No one is going to force me to make a trade. I've made it very clear the only way I would trade any player on our team is if it's a trade that makes us a better team.

But those things usually work themselves out during training camp.

I can't go into any of the financial details, but some things were worked out that will help us,

He was the logical choice. We're loaded at his position. He wasn't going to play that much so this makes sense for both parties.

He gives us insurance at the point guard position and will help our younger players develop.

He's a real man who has a strong character. He's not one of those guys who will come in and complain that they aren't staying in a five-star hotel.

The owner calls every Monday 9 a.m. sharp. The cafeteria closes for lunch at 2. The washroom is down the hall to the left. And, oh yeah, Vince Carter wants to be traded.

I would say it's probably a long shot,

Matt is more than just a good basketball player. He is the consummate professional who places his team first and gives a total effort every night.

I was very surprised. I had no idea this was coming. They told me they want someone with more experience.

I think if you look at us on paper, we probably will not win as many games as last year.

That was the best trade out there. There was no better trade.

We can't get him unless he suddenly turns into a minimum-salary guy,

We pursued all the trade scenarios we could (to try to move Murray). With that in mind, the timing of this is out of respect for Lamond and his family. This hopefully gives him a reasonable opportunity to catch on with another team.

We've got some good young kids and it depends on their learning curves and how quickly they develop.

Yeah, we have a lot of faith in them. We're building for the future of this team and we think it's a very bright future.

We had expressed some interest in him, sure. I'm not trying to hide anything. We spoke with his agent. But he falls directly into that category where we determined we don't have enough money left to make a serious bid.

We still have some trades we're pursuing with regard to balancing our roster.

We still have a long way to go, but we have the guys here now who see what the plan is, and they understand it, ... They realize that there's no cutting corners, that it's going to be a lot of hard work, learning to play as a team, doing things the right way ... Our guys are starting to get that and things are turning around.

We're pursuing trades and other free agents as well. We'll just have to keep pursuing them and see which one pops up and take the best one we can get.

When we looked at the other (free-agent) point guards who were available, we determined a lot of them weren't worth the money. And of the ones we were interested in, we had to ask ourselves, do we have enough money left to make a serious bid? So at that point we said, okay, let's sign Matt, who we wanted to keep anyway, and we likely will go with a minimum-salary guy to fill that spot as our third point guard.

We'd be getting the opportunity to be as strong a team as possible (by adding Duhon) and it would give us a lot of flexibility,

We are excited to have Pape back with us. He has worked very hard on his game over the past year, both during the season and throughout the summer.

We had to do something with our roster. We could have waited but we looked at all kinds of different possibilities, two-for-one (trades), things like that. We just couldn't come up with anything that worked.

We more or less have the same team back with the exception of Donyell Marshall, who was an integral part of our team last year. We're replacing him with rookies.

We signed Rafer to a six-year deal last year without any really healthy point guards other than Milt Palacio. Things kind of changed over the summer. Rafer still would have been a good fit for our team, but we felt this was a better fit and certainly gives us more flexibility down the road in regards to the cap.

We certainly would like to have him back on our basketball team. But we have to take a look at everything when the season ends, that gets into money situations, roster spots, draft picks. We have to look at all the different things, so it's too early to tell anything.

We are very close to agreeing to something with Matt. I anticipate it getting done quickly.

Even bad teams have optimism. The Bad News Bears' coach wouldn't even tell his team that.

First, we eventually are going to need that roster spot,

Other point guards in his range are not likely to want to come in here and compete with Rafer and Calderon, ... He wasn't afraid to come in here knowing what we had.

There will be growing pains, no doubt about it. We more or less have the same team back with the exception of Donyell Marshall, who was an integral part of our team last year. We're replacing him with rookies.

There will be growing pains, no doubt about it,

There's a lot of players on our team who are young . . . and we think they're going to be good players for us in the future. It just depends on how quickly they adjust and how quickly they develop.

As you know, I don't comment on trades. I will say we've had discussion with them. I can't go into specifics other than we've had discussions.

It just made sense to do it, ... He was the least likely of them to get any playing time.

It's unrelated, since we still could have signed another player now without waiving anyone, ... That's not to say for sure that we won't sign someone next week. But we still may wait until just before training camp, depending upon what happens.

Things didn't go as well as we would have hoped last year, but I was very optimistic that would have been turned around based off our discussions and the way things were going with our workouts,

The message that we want to get out there is basically what our plan is,

Chris, along with Rafer Alston and Jose Calderon, would give us flexibility in the guard positions. Chris was the starting point guard for a playoff team in Chicago and won a national championship with Duke. At just 23 years of age, he offers a lot of potential.

If I had to guess, I'd guess they would probably match, ... ... But there's a little chance they might not. You have to be aggressive and see what happens.

I don't make comments on any trade discussions or rumors,