Post-Draft Availability l Bobby Webster – June 26, 2024

Post-Draft Availability l Bobby Webster – June 26, 2024

why this guy without having worked him out yeah uh obviously feel fortunate to get jacobe at this spot um you know maybe he thought he was going earlier maybe you know the the mocks had him going earlier but um a kid we followed you know since high school I think he uh he first popped up on the I think they won the Geico National High School National Tournament in in the states he played for link and so just always been a winner tough kind of you know fits the mold of a two-way Raptor player can make a shot can play defense um so you know some guy we we followed for a while but we necessarily think he’d be there at 19 so we feel great he does seem to have that kind of big personality like Scotty Barnes that you look for that kind of guys that group no I mean I think you know you want serious guys you want guys that want to win um I think we’re all probably trying to figure out this generation a little bit with you know the personalities and how many of those in the locker room uh but no this was just a good basketball Talent play any any hesitation taking a guy that you didn’t weren able to get in for a workout like were you able to interview him at the at the comine yeah so I mean you know we have our staff here that does all the Intel and so we had some people that spent uh Luke probably spent I don’t know maybe a week at Baylor earlier in the year I went down and met him in Baylor and so um we had a comfort level from that um you know you want to do your due diligence and you know it’s tough when you don’t get to bring a kid up here but we feel comfortable he didn’t have great shooting efficiency at Bor um my understanding before that he was an explosive offensive player what do you attribute that to and what do you see him as an offensive player moving forward yeah I think that’s why it’s you know important to scout him in the amateure level and then I think maybe if you look at the splits it’s a little bit different early in the season um and he may have been dealing with some knee stuff but yeah no I mean you got to make shots in this league and you can’t just sort of have the reputation of a shooter you have to do it so um I think obviously that’s our bet bet with him you mentioned him being potentially a two-way player what do you see his defensive potential as being yeah um so obviously guard ones and twos I think he’s he’s got pretty good length um I think there’s just sort of a uh inner toughness when you watch him and he rebounds the ball well so you know not afraid to kind of stick his nose in there um so yeah he talked about wanting to make an an immediate impact um do you see him as a guy that could come in and you know get some minutes off the bench potentially and make that impact yeah we always take these guys I think Grady’s a good example last year right you come in and it’s going to be up and down and so I think that’s probably more of the expectation is um you may be able to come in right away but can you kind of sustain it throughout the course of the Season especially as a young player and the physicality and the travel and all that um but no yeah we’re obviously taking these kids because we think they can come in and play I I know you guys generally draft best player available as opposed to drafting for need but uh this is a pretty guard heavy roster and another guard now added to it how might that impact uh your decisions moving forward obviously a decision coming up with Bruce Brown and then a couple of guards hitting free agency a few days later yeah I think we’re still in sort of best available I’m not sure we have enough Talent you know to say hey this is what we’re going to go forward with or this is you know we can start picking and choosing so I think we’re still sort of you know amassing the group and then we can kind of let them battle it out and compete against them um as as opposed to saying we took this position and now we need to kind of um you know have it affect our future decisions have the calls already started for 31 and is it nice to how nice is it to be in this position we you’re kind of we had some long debates in there we were like should we trade to get into the late 20s or should we have a little fun with 31 so I think when we did the deal with New York we knew this was sort of a benefit of having 31 was to kind of be able to have this next 18 hours to sort of field calls I think what typically happens right in the draft is it very quickly turns the round two and you have two minutes and I think just just logistically you can’t take all the calls you’d want to and so now we have some time we also have some time to re sort of considerer our list as we think about 31 tomorrow so we’ll probably have some pretty big fights tomorrow in the morning about who we would take and then simultaneously take these calls and say okay could we get multiple picks can we move back a little bit still get the same guy um but yeah I don’t know it’s it’s a first it’s a it’s a bit of a novelty for all of us here to have two days of the draft and see what happens are there pros and cons to being in this position like is it possible to to maybe overthink in this situation or are you just happy to have more time to make I guess a more measured decision I we’ll see I I think you’d say you’d like to have the more time I’d say it’s probably it has to be better than the two minutes that you normally would have um but yeah we kind of almost got into it there back in the room about who we’re going to take and I think we all just decided let’s sleep on it like it’s probably not yeah you don’t want to fight over it now did you get I mean with 31 specific but in general did you sense it was quieter than normal just because everybody knows there will be eight hours to talk about it tomorrow morning yeah I think even teams kind of set their boards um knowing that they had it tomorrow to set up the second day of their boards and so kind of more peac meal um so I think that’s probably maybe easier on us or gives a bit more time were there a lot of fights about to take it 19 no jacobe was was was pretty clearly the the kind of best available to Point wasn’t a really positional fit neat a lot of the talk going into this draft was about how wide open everything was unpredictable and Dan talked about it the other day is that sort of the way that things played out in your view yeah there was no consensus right I think even the number one pick was probably not really known until you know recently um you can talk by the draft it sort of people felt like I think probably when it got to like 9 or 10 we felt like it was kind of all the same after that there there’s probably some group at the top um I think it was hard to predict 19 cuz there was no consensus before so like we’re sitting there at 12 and 13 like okay is jacobe still going to be there um when some people had jacobe in the top 10 or some people in the lottery so there’s always that game of trying to you know game plan it out were there any conversations you had um with people from Baylor that really stuck out to you about his character or his game or or anything that really stuck out from Bor things yeah I think just um obviously him coming from link so he comes from a pretty high pedigree high school program and then I think now for those of you who follow college like Baylor’s become one of the Premier winning programs in basketball so I think those kind of things that he valued um from the recruiting standpoint but also decisions he made and so uh thoughtful kid um cares about the right things will do you anticipate the next 16 hours are going to look like are you going home from here not talking about it until tomorrow or come back early how’s it what’s it going to look like I don’t know it’s probably a good psychological decision-making question yeah I’m going to try and not think about it until probably I wake up and then try and come in here fresh tomorrow and not have sort of the preconceived of what we thought you know who’s supposedly on our board right now like can we come in and kind of debate the top three or four players left um for 31 is Dan upset that he can’t make his two-way calls tonight no I think everybody’s happy that we’re not up till three cuz no that’s we used to do this press conference but then we’d go back and do all the two-ways so I think I don’t know the drafts have four tomorrow yeah so it’ll be it’ll be a regular work day something else going on at night apparently I know I didn’t think they knew the right date they knew the date when they made this idea oh we’re not going there thanks for watching the Toronto Raptor YouTube channel check out our latest videos and subscribe for more Trent answers back Gary side step great got it

Toronto Raptors General Manager Bobby Webster speaks with the media following the 2024 NBA Draft.
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