Quotes by Rob Babcock

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“When we looked at the other (free-agent) point guards who were available, we determined a lot of them werent 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, lets 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.”

“He was the logical choice. Were loaded at his position. He wasnt going to play that much so this makes sense for both parties.”

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

“If I had to guess, Id guess they would probably match, ... ... But theres a little chance they might not. You have to be aggressive and see what happens.”

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

“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 couldnt come up with anything that worked.”