Due to his extremely blunt, concise approach to interviews, Anunoby — the Toronto Raptors’ first-round pick this June — has developed a bit of a reputation for having an intensely serious personality. Nothing could be further from the truth. When he’s relaxed and around those he trusts, Anunoby is silly, jovial, fun-loving, a dancer. Old teammates and close friends say they can’t get him to shut up. But only occasionally does his goofiness permeate into the public realm, such as the video of Anunoby — then a baby-faced college freshman — winning an on-stage dance competition at a tournament banquet in Maui.

Truth is, Anunoby has always been content to let his play speak for itself while everyone else sorts out the rest. He’s not shy and he’s not insecure — he’s just about his business in a way most 20-year-olds are not. It’s part of what made him one of the draft’s most intriguing selections — an extraordinarily gifted athlete and versatile defender with top-10 potential, who nevertheless fell to No. 23 due to questions about his offensive ceiling and the fact he was still recovering from knee surgery at the time, leading ESPN college basketball analyst Fran Fraschilla to playfully coin him a “sexy blogger pick.”

There’s a lot for bloggers to like. Measuring six-foot-eight and 235 pounds, with a preposterous seven-foot-two wingspan, Anunoby is multiple defenders in one. He’s quick and explosive enough to keep up with guards on the perimeter; instinctual and energetic enough to stay on slicing wings; strong and bulky enough to hang in the paint with bruising big men. He’ll jump passing lanes for steals, fight through screens like he enjoys it, and use his rocket-shoed vertical to block shots. Offensively, he’s no magician with the ball in his hands, but he shoots from distance, scores in the post and comes up with key offensive rebounds. He’s the new NBA — a positionless player you can utilize in lineups both big and small. That, and his potential to grow into a Kawhi Leonard-type as he continues to mature and develop, is why Toronto was enamoured with him, and why they feel like they got an absolute steal selecting him where they did. “If he doesn’t have that injury,” Raptors President Masai Ujiri said on draft night, “I don’t think we have a shot.”

For his part, Anunoby’s strong preference was to become a Raptor as well. His draft workouts were a little unconventional considering he couldn’t actually work out. Still rehabbing the torn ACL he suffered in his right knee in January, Anunoby was unable to do anything more than stationary shooting, which put him under much more scrutiny when he sat down at the table to be interviewed. Teams asked endless questions about his knee, his rehab timelines and how hard he was working to get back to full strength. Some, he sensed, were skeptical. “I was telling them everything,” Anunoby says. “But, I don’t know, maybe they didn’t believe everything.” Toronto’s interview, meanwhile, was much more encouraging. “They were really trying to know me as a person, more than other teams did,” he continues, noting he felt a strong familial vibe from Toronto’s front office. “It was just a good environment. Everyone seemed really close. I liked Toronto right away.”