Let’s Build It - Scouting

Assistant general manager Rob Babcock joined us in our next "Let's Build It" segment to take us through the all-encompassing process that is scouting potential Wolves players.

Babcock On Scouting (audio)

Q: On the scope of the scouting process for the Wolves' basketball operations department:
Rob Babcock: We've increased the size of the staff significantly over the last two years; we have more people out and the coverage has been outstanding. We has a philosophy where everybody is seeing everything as opposed to having one person cover Northeast, somebody cover Southeast, somebody cover the Midwest and so forth. We have everybody seeing everything, which I think is effective because that covers crosschecks. I may see a team three times while somebody else sees them three times, so you have a lot more coverage that way. But we have been out extensively at college practices before the season started. We have covered Europe better than we ever have with (International Scout) Pete Philo being full-time. (VP of Basketball Operations) Kevin McHale's making a trip next week. (Director of Player Personnel) Zarko (Durisic) and I going over this week. (General Manager) Jim (Stack) goes over later. (Assistant General Manager) Fred's (Hoiberg) been over once. We made a trip with three of us before. We have really got great coverage in Europe. We feel really confident that we are getting the homework done. That's the biggest aspect of scouting, gathering information and evaluations and putting them all together. The toughest part is making the decisions.

Q: On the importance of gathering several opinions on a given player.
Babcock: You want to make sure you're not making a decision on a whim, or because you happen to see a guy play two of his best games of the year, and then you get an inaccurate evaluation of that player. You have to see him play multiple times, not just in person but then supplement it on videotape and so forth. You want to make sure that when it comes down to when we're really doing our priority list and ranking everybody, that ... ultimately you have a gut feeling on a player, and you're going to go with a lot of intangible things, but you want that built on a solid base of good information.

Q: On the scouting database going back years on many players:
Babcock: Absolutely, we begin seeing some players - the ones that are the blue-chip guys - on national teams in youth competitions at a very early age. For example, this trip we're making to Europe where we're leaving (Friday) we are starting off in Germany; we'll be at the Albert-Schweitzer International Tournament. It's an international tournament with the top teams from all over the world 18 and under, so these top players, these blue chip guys, we're going to see them at a very young age. They aren't even going to be draft-eligible for a couple years. That's the first time. Then you get them on your list at that point if they project as a prospect. By the time they come out and enter the draft we may have been following these guys anywhere from 3-to-6 years depending on when they entered the draft.

Q: On if Minnesota's list is set leading up to draft day?
Babcock: To a degree, but the thing that is tough about it is that you don't know who is going to enter the draft. You have to start the year and you have to look at every single prospect that you have listed and you have to make a determination. If this guy were to enter the draft this year, would he be a potential draft pick? If he is, you better go out and see him, and assume - because you don't know - that he is going to enter the draft. It requires you to see a lot more people. If we knew, (for instance) the rule was, you can't come out until you're 21 - so there is a prospect who is a freshman in college and 19 years old - we might just see a couple teams. We don't feel like we need to see him multiple times because we are going to see him his sophomore year and his junior year. That's not the rule. The rule is 19. One year. You have to assume that they all come out. You hope that they don't. It's a lot more work than it used to be. You can't start off with just a small little group.

Q: On how the job must be more challenging now that teams don't have the time to see college players grow in school:
Babcock: It makes it much more difficult. The toughest thing is if a player comes out after just his freshman year. All you have to evaluate is the high school, if you saw him in high school, and you can only see him in a couple venues, like McDonald's, All-Star (games), Hoops Summit, those types of things. You don't have a learning curve established. You have what he did his freshman year. You don't know how much he is really going to learn and develop and what his work ethic is. If a guy comes back and plays his sophomore year, now you can compare between the freshman year and the sophomore year. You can look and say, 'Hey, the freshman year, this is what he did, and this is what his weaknesses were. His sophomore year, this is where he improved.' This guy obviously worked very, very hard and now you've established a learning curve. It's easier to make a prediction and say that three years from now, based on this learning curve, he has a chance to get to this level.

Q: On what differentiates one organization from another in terms of the scouting department?
Babcock: I think the vast majority of NBA teams do a great job in preparing for the draft and for trades and everything. It's professional basketball. There are a lot of bright people on every team. There are different ways of approaching it, different styles, different reporting techniques. It all ends up being similar. It comes down to the guy making the final decision and his personality and the types of players he's looking for, and the philosophy of that team and what type of players he's trying to attract to that team and organization. You get some philosophical things in there, but if you do your homework, the rankings are relatively similar for most players. There certainly are changes from one team to another the way you rank and rate players, but if you look at the track record it's hit or miss an awful lot. It doesn't matter if you're Jerry West, considered the greatest general manager in the history of the game, or if you're Sam Presti, who's in his first year as general manager in Seattle. A lot of it is going to be a little bit of luck. A lot of it is that you're evaluating a player's heart and his mind, which are extremely difficult things to evaluate. The physical aspects, the skill aspects are very easy to evaluate, but the heart and the mind, the intangibles, those are the tough things. Mistakes are made. People always come back and harp on this organization because we didn't take Josh Howard and he developed into an All-Star. Well, everybody else in the league passed on Josh Howard. You can say did everybody make a mistake? Or Dallas, were they fortunate enough to take Josh Howard? They probably had pretty much the same evaluation as everybody else. It got to the point where they said, you know what, Josh Howard, he's pretty good, we'll take him. They had no idea he would be an All-Star. Every team has those examples. (Every team) has other ones where they've messed up. Everybody misses on players. That's just the nature ... They're human beings. How many people passed on Craig Smith?

Q: On drafting Craig Smith, a second-round pick who has shown that he's a much better player than the position in which he was drafted.
Babcock: I think we definitely did our due diligence. We had seen him quite a bit. He's one of those players that some people thought was an undersized '4' man. It's a tough position to evaluate. We had three or four people on our staff that were really high on Craig Smith and had very positive evaluations of him starting with his freshman year in college. Kevin (McHale) really liked Craig because he was crafty inside, used pivots and everything, very similar to Kevin, (but) certainly different body types, no question on that. They both got a lot done inside with the use of pivots and craftiness inside. Kevin McHale certainly appreciates that type of thing. I do think that him being out with a wrist injury certainly hurt him because he was not seen in Orlando playing. He was considered going into the season, we had him projected as a first-round pick from his freshman year. Were we lucky? I think we were fortunate that somebody else didn't take him in front of us. Were we geniuses? I think we did a solid job in our evaluation. Give credit to Craig Smith. I think he's worked hard and developed too.

Q: On what actually occurs on Draft Day?
Babcock: Generally it's not that crazy, because you do all your homework ahead of time. We go over all the different scenarios, the players are all ranked, you're prepared, you've done your homework. The actual draft is the exam. You've made your decisions pretty much ahead of time.

Q: On it getting interesting when...:
Babcock: Where it can get really interesting is if you have some trade discussions going on during the draft. There's a situation where a pick is coming up and you're talking to a team about making a trade for that pick and there are going to make the pick for you and trade it to you later on. That's where the anxiety level raises up quite a bit, even though you know what you're going to tell them to take. Or if a team calls us and tells us we're interested in this pick and that's happening during the draft, that's when it gets tense. It gets fun. I like that kind of stuff. We may see a player starting to slip in the draft that we had listed 31, or somewhere between 33, 34, 35. If we see a player that we have projected going 20-23, and he's starting to fall, and we're thinking 'oh my gosh.' That gets kind of exciting. We may all of a sudden talk to a team late in the first round who is willing to trade that first round pick for 31 and 34 or something. We see a player starting to fall, we have to make a decision. Do we want to give up these two second-round picks to try and get this guy at 28 or so because we see him starting to slip? That's when those decisions start to get tense sometimes.

Q: On the importance of signing quality free agents, like Jose Calderon, whom Babcock signed as the GM of the Toronto Raptors.
Babcock: Absolutely. That preparation is an ongoing thing that you're always working on. It steps up a lot at the end of the season because you have to do your homework in the free-agency market because that can make a determination, and vice versa, on what you do in the draft. If it comes down to, let's say you need a small forward, if you have the potential to draft a small forward, but you see the free-agency market and see four or five quality small forwards available and you think you might have the chance to get one of those guys ... Now the time comes in the draft and you're looking at a small forward and a center at the same position there, now maybe the fact that you know you can get a free agent and rate those guys equal, you go with the center.