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AJ, the last time we spoke was about 2 days ago in Brooklyn. The last 48 hours you said they were crazy. What's happened? No sleep. But meeting the whole staff, visiting Capital One, going to the war room, meeting all the people that drafted me, um, this press conference, going to the Mystics game, there's a whole bunch of activities. So over the last two days, I know you've, you said you went to Capital One. What was that moment like when you got to see your new home? It was crazy just going into the locker room and just seeing, like, you know, all those NBA names, seeing people that you actually looked up to and playing.
Um, and then seeing your jersey right there, it just, it was just kind of surreal feeling obviously it wasn't done. I think they're renovating it, um, so I couldn't see the court and everything, but I actually went on the court, um, seeing the stands getting rebuilt, and it's just, I can kind of see the potential in it. You sell out stadiums. You think you're gonna sell this one out? Definitely. I mean, it's not only me, obviously, but I think the team's definitely gonna sell it out. You had a lot of cool phone calls.
I know your teammates. I heard Jaden Daniels reached out. What was the coolest person from your perspective to reach out? I mean, yeah, JD 5 was, was definitely fire. Um, I met Wale on draft night, so Wale's been, you know, tapping on me for a little while. He has a little nickname for me, Rainbow Face and everything, but he wanted me to come and he put it to my draft board, -- and I got -- to meet him.
Are you gonna be coming out to Wale? I mean that's to say that I might, I have to take that. That's actually a song that it's gonna take a lot of thought what I'm gonna walk out to, so I gotta be swaggy. -- It's -- gotta be swaggy. So that first day, I know it's far from now and you're still dealing with all this media stuff, what do you hope that first moment on the court is like when you can finally just be playing basketball? Um, it's just gonna be great. Um, we don't know if it's going to be an away game, but the first home game is definitely gonna be a great setting.
Definitely want to see it packed out, sold out. Um, my first bucket, after I get the first bucket, I have to get all the jitters out, but it'll be fire for sure. Number 4, I heard you say it before. You were 3 in college. You number 1 overall pick. Trey did tweet to talk about 3. Did that conversation happen? No, -- I haven't -- talked to him since the draft, but he's the vet. I'm gonna respect his number, um, and I wear 4 this year.
AJ, thanks so much. Best of luck in the city. Thank you. You guys kept this pick so close to the vest. Why, um, it's important, I think, just professionally to make sure that you have options all the way up to the very end. We decided it was going to be AJ before that and informed our group, but I think going into the draft, you never know what could happen. But we, we knew it was our guy, um, sharing it with the rest of the world wasn't our responsibility. You guys have made it very clear that AJ was the guy in this press conference. What was the moment when you realized AJ Debos is gonna be the next part of this franchise?
Yeah, um, we've tracked him for many years now, and you know that he's going to be a top player if he elected to be in the draft, so you're following him, make sure he stays in, you meet with him in Chicago, and then I think the moment happened shortly after he came in for a visit. He solidified who he was. He made sure he wanted to be here. He really, we put him through a rigorous workout that was competitive, and he wanted more, um, and at that point we knew he was the guy for us.
I'm sure you don't want to go into too much detail, but when you talk about a rigorous workout, like. does that entail for the people who have no idea? Yeah, so we probably bring him in the night before and just do like an activation shooting workout, get his legs back on solid ground from flying across the country, and then the second day it's probably just film, really going through film work, seeing how he sees the game, more about just authenticity, like what he can see and what he wants to improve on, and then it's it's a full on, not a one on no workout.
We have a lot of our coaching apprentices on there pushing them and putting them in different drills, and it's just. To see how he learns, put them in situations, to make decisions that we would want our players to make, teach him our terminology and see how fast he picks up information, and then just put them in competitive environments and let him excel, and he did that. So we've seen AJ the player throughout college. We've seen AJ the guy because he's very frontward facing. What's he like in the film room? How is he as a cerebral player?
Yeah, the IQ is huge. We want advanced processors and we think we have that. And again, there's 24 seconds on the shot. Those who can think fastest get more time, and he's one of those guys athletically, what was the, we hear so much about his intangibles, we've seen him score. What is it that stands out that makes him like an NBA scout's dream? Yeah, for us, we have our own internal metrics and just on physicality and athleticism testing, and he was number one in the 4 years that I've been here, the 4 drafts we've had, and it's, it's a rare size. It's 6'10 inch shoes with a 7. Wingspan and the ability to jump out of the gym but also get low and move and when you do the biometrics and see his acceleration, deceleration,
you get excited about things like that. What have you learned about him in this last 48 hours that he truly is who he says he is and that he really wants to be here and be a part of something special, he's motivated to do that. So you feel really good about that when you realize his dream is to grow in DC.
