[TorontoStar] New Raptor boss remains myst …
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Jun. 6, 2004. 01:00 AM
New Raptor boss remains mystery man
Little known about incoming GM Babcock
Considered a nice guy who 'knows his basketball'
DOUG SMITH
SPORTS REPORTER
LOS ANGELES—Tiny Augsburg College is hardly a bastion of great
college basketball, a little liberal arts school nestled in the
twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., an NCAA Division
III nonentity that is so far off the NBA radar it's ridiculous.
Yet every now and then in the late 1990s, an NBA executive would
show up at the school's games, sitting in anonymity among the few
fans who cared to attend, intently watching one of the players he
thought might have some promise.
It's virtually impossible to truly measure the skill of a player
at a school like Augsburg, where the competition is always suspect
and projecting a Division III player onto the best basketball stage
in the world is a mug's game.
Yet Rob Babcock, then the director of player personnel for the
Minnesota Timberwolves, figured the guy he was watching would
indeed become a good player and he did.
"He was one of the only guys to come over to Augsburg to watch
games," Los Angeles Lakers forward Devean George said here
yesterday. "He'd give me tips, he'd talk to me, he'd talk to my
agent. He's a really good guy."
Babcock, one of three brothers involved in running NBA franchises
at various levels, will be formally introduced tomorrow as the new
Raptor general manager, given the nominal keys to a franchise in a
sorry state of disrepair.
Babcock inherits a team with only seven players under contract and
far over the salary cap already; he's got the No. 8 pick in the
coming draft and there is no consensus on who the Raptors should
take or if they should consider dealing down in the draft. Babcock
still has to hire a coach, figure out who the Raptors will expose
in the coming expansion draft and then ferret out free agents to
fill the roster and serve as summer league and training camp fodder.
It is a large order for someone who's been a vice-president of
personnel with the Timberwolves and whose reputation around the
league — if you can find a few people who know anything about
him — is as someone who aligned himself with Minnesota ownership
and did whatever team president Kevin McHale didn't want to do.
"He's a great guy, he's hard-working, he knows his basketball," said
George. "I don't think anybody would have anything bad to say about
him."
And that might be because few people know much about him except the
fact he's considered a truly nice man.
"He's a great guy, like Glen," said one league source, invoking the
name of the man Babcock is replacing, Glen Grunwald.
But at least the Raptors haven't sent him out into the tough world
of NBA trades, signings and talent assessment on his own, which one
league official said might have been the reason for the delay in
hiring him.
Surrounding him with two hall of famers — executive Wayne Embry and
former player Alex English — is seen as giving him two sounding
boards and the Raptors may have waited to get them before hiring
Babcock, a league source said.
It's tough, however, to get an exact handle on what Babcock has done
in his NBA career since he's never been the man in charge. In his
time with the Timberwolves, the team has gone from an expansion team
to a perennial playoff squad but how much of that was the doing of
McHale and not Babcock is debatable and known only to them. Babcock
spent five seasons as the director of scouting for the Denver Nuggets
before joining Minnesota.
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