（重新招工）‘Anyone can spot LeBron’: The making of Pistons GM Troy Weaver由JabariIverson 发表在翻译团招工部 https://bbs.hupu.com/fyt-store
Jim Boeheim sat dubious in 2000 as his assistant Troy Weaver offered up his solution to landing Syracuse its first NCAA basketball title.
Weaver had just returned from Baltimore, where he had watched an emerging but still primarily local recruit named Carmelo Anthony from nearby Towson Catholic High School. Weaver, enamored with Anthony’s combination of power and elegance, told his boss that this was the player who was going to elevate the Orangemen to that next tier in college basketball’s hierarchy.
“I said, ‘Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that one before,'” Boeheim, Syracuse’s basketball coach since 1976, told The Athletic. “Of course, I went down to see him, and Carmelo hit a 3, a 15-footer and then dunked it, all in three straight plays. I looked at Troy and said, ‘Well, you might be right.'”
Weaver, a prophet dressed as an assistant coach, delivered as Syracuse hoisted the national trophy in 2003, winning the championship behind a superstar freshman in Anthony and a storied group of underclassmen who Weaver helped shepherd to upstate New York.
Boeheim had captured the NCAA title that had evaded him all those years. Anthony, a year later, was a top-5 pick in the NBA Draft.
One recruit, one decision, changed the state of Syracuse basketball.
“The biggest disappointment I had with Troy is that he left our program when Kevin Durant was coming out of high school, and he knew Kevin and his mother. We were in a good position,” Boeheim said with a chuckle. “Troy found Carmelo before he really blew up. He blew up the next summer.
“Anyone can spot LeBron and know he’s good, but not everyone knew Steph Curry was going to be really good. Troy has an eye. He’s a great evaluator of both players and people.”
Twenty years later, and Weaver’s innate trait for plucking talent has positioned him to face the ultimate challenge in team building. Last week, after a 10-year stint in Oklahoma City’s front office, Weaver was named the general manager of the Pistons, whose championship history has fallen on tough times for the last decade-plus. Detroit had been relying on senior adviser Ed Stefanski as its front-office voice since parting ways with former GM Jeff Bower in 2018.
Weaver has never been a general manager, though the Washington, D.C., native has been a candidate for almost every NBA front-office opening for the past six years or so. His name has echoed throughout board rooms for the very same reasons he was able to help make Syracuse a national champion — his ability to identify good basketball players, both highly regarded and overlooked.
The Pistons are in a critical stage, beginning a rebuild with young prospects who appear to be better served as role players. The team needs its Carmelo Anthony, but it also needs an identity and roster capable of sustained success.
Putting that together, from everything you hear, is what Weaver does best.
“A lot of teams made a mistake by not hiring him. He’s put his hands on a lot of impact players,” said Mike Sumner, a childhood friend of Weaver’s. Sumner coached the D.C. Assault AAU team, which reached the 1996 AAU Tournament of Champions, with Weaver in the mid ’90s. “He definitely has that trait. He might be one of the best at that. It comes from his home.”
Maryland’s Prince George’s County is a basketball factory, a breeding ground for some of the game’s greats of both past and present. Durant hails from there. The Pacers’ Victor Oladipo, too. Adrian Dantley, Steve Francis and the late Len Bias paved the way for the newer generation of stars who frequently seem to pop up from this area.
Weaver grew up a stone’s throw away from this hoops hotbed. His family, Sumner describes, are “sports nuts,” and he can recall countless times huddling with them in the living room while some sport with a ball was on television.
“They know all the players,” Sumner said.
Weaver never played high-level basketball, but he earned respect in his region through his knowledge of the game and his resources. Weaver went to Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C., and played one year of college ball at Prince George’s Community College before obtaining his associate’s degree and moving on to Bowie State University. When Sumner approached him about constructing the D.C. Assault, Weaver was working players out at a local gym. Weaver also had a connection with a rep at Nike. Sumner saw Weaver as a someone who could propel the AAU program in more ways than one.
Immediately, Weaver started finding players who would help turn the Assault into a national brand. One overlooked player identified by Weaver as a “must-get” was Cliff Hawkins, a freshman guard from Virginia’s Potomac High School who was not yet a household name beyond the local area.
“When we first saw him, that was a guy we didn’t think was a high-major player before he got to us,” Sumner said of Hawkins, who ended up being one of the top guards in the country, winning Virginia’s Mr. Basketball award as a senior at Oak Hill Academy and playing collegiately at Kentucky. “Troy liked him.”
Weaver also found Josh Pace, a 6-foot-5 lefty who was a key contributor off the bench during Syracuse’s national title run, through the AAU circuit.
Pace was playing for an AAU team in his home state of Georgia when he went up against the Weaver-coached Assault during his junior year. Pace recalls having a good game. A few years later, he was weighing his college options but keen on leaving Georgia. Weaver, having joined the college ranks by then, circled back and began recruiting him.
“Syracuse turned into the right fit for me because of Coach Weaver and the relationship we built,” said Pace, who now coaches the women’s team at Western New Mexico. “He kept it real with me and broke down the situation. They had guards similar to me before me. He told me I could come in and play my game. He knew what Boeheim was looking for and thought I’d fit it.”
Boeheim recalls Weaver attracting far more recruits like Pace than Anthony, of course. Weaver, Boeheim said, spotlighted C.J. Fair, a swingman from Baltimore who Rivals ranked as 94th in the 2010 recruiting class. He ended up averaging 16.5 points per game his senior year at Syracuse. Down the line, by then in the NBA, Weaver called Boeheim and told him to check out an underclassman at DeMatha High School in Hyattsville, Md., by the name of Jerami Grant.
Grant, a scrawny kid with long arms, wasn’t really on the national radar. But Boeheim, who had all the trust in the world in Weaver at this point, started looking into him.
“My sister, who lived in the area, called and said, ‘Why are you even recruiting him? He’s not even All-City,'” Boeheim said. “But Troy liked him, and we liked him, of course. And now Grant has started to establish himself in the NBA.”
Grant was a second-round pick in 2014 who averaged 11.6 points in 64 games last season for the Nuggets. In 2018-19, he averaged 13.6 points in 80 games for the Thunder.
“Troy would always say … ‘That guy is really good, and I don’t know if we can get him, but we can get this other guy,'” Boeheim said. “That’s so important because, in college, anyone can say we want to get LeBron or Zion or one of those guys, but you can’t get those guys. You can see a guy rated 80th in the country and you think he’s a pro, and he is. It’s not that simple, even at a high level, to forecast what they’ll be. The more experience you have, the better you’ll be, and I think Troy is a very good evaluator.”
These players Weaver has helped usher into programs all commit based off who Troy, the person, is. Just ask Ricardo Greer, a star at Pittsburgh from 1997-2001, when Weaver was working as an assistant under head coach Ralph Willard.
Greer remembers walking into practice as if he had been living in a bunker for the last seven months. His facial hair was untamed, scruffy and off-putting. That day, Weaver pulled him aside and forced him to think about the bigger picture.
“He said to me, ‘What are you doing?'” said Greer, who is now an assistant coach at the University of Dayton. “I said back, ‘What do you mean, Coach?’ He told me that wasn’t a good look for me. He told me that I need to be clean-cut and represent myself in a different light. He went on to say that kids are watching me, and I need to be presentable at all times.
“That stuck with me to this day. I try to maintain that professionalism because of those words that he said to me 20 years ago.”
The Pistons needed several boxes to be checked before crowning their next general manager. Talent evaluation was of the utmost importance. So were player and people relationships. In a profession that welcomes courting at the highest level, having someone who can walk side by side with different types of life goes a long way.
Ultimately, it should all culminate into winning — or at least Detroit hopes it does. Weaver was the man for this job, at this time. His experiences through basketball all were precursors to this moment. Whether he can deliver is another thing, but we do know he’s positioned himself to succeed.
Now, it’s just a waiting game.
“He’s very good at seeing talent and organizing and structuring, whether recruiting or getting players to buy in,” Pace said. “His reliability off the court is key. He can identify different personalities and people and put together teams that bring people together to achieve the common goal, which is winning. He wants to build something that’ll last, a structure.”
Jim Boeheim sat dubious in 2000 as his assistant Troy Weaver offered up his solution to landing Syracuse its first NCAA basketball title.
Weaver had just returned from Baltimore, where he had watched an emerging but still primarily local recruit named Carmelo Anthony from nearby Towson Catholic High School. Weaver, enamored with Anthony’s combination of power and elegance, told his boss that this was the player who was going to elevate the Orangemen to that next tier in college basketball’s hierarchy.
“I said, ‘Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that one before,'” Boeheim, Syracuse’s basketball coach since 1976, told The Athletic. “Of course, I went down to see him, and Carmelo hit a 3, a 15-footer and then dunked it, all in three straight plays. I looked at Troy and said, ‘Well, you might be right.'”
Weaver, a prophet dressed as an assistant coach, delivered as Syracuse hoisted the national trophy in 2003, winning the championship behind a superstar freshman in Anthony and a storied group of underclassmen who Weaver helped shepherd to upstate New York.
Boeheim had captured the NCAA title that had evaded him all those years. Anthony, a year later, was a top-5 pick in the NBA Draft.
One recruit, one decision, changed the state of Syracuse basketball.
“The biggest disappointment I had with Troy is that he left our program when Kevin Durant was coming out of high school, and he knew Kevin and his mother. We were in a good position,” Boeheim said with a chuckle. “Troy found Carmelo before he really blew up. He blew up the next summer.
“Anyone can spot LeBron and know he’s good, but not everyone knew Steph Curry was going to be really good. Troy has an eye. He’s a great evaluator of both players and people.”
Twenty years later, and Weaver’s innate trait for plucking talent has positioned him to face the ultimate challenge in team building. Last week, after a 10-year stint in Oklahoma City’s front office, Weaver was named the general manager of the Pistons, whose championship history has fallen on tough times for the last decade-plus. Detroit had been relying on senior adviser Ed Stefanski as its front-office voice since parting ways with former GM Jeff Bower in 2018.
Weaver has never been a general manager, though the Washington, D.C., native has been a candidate for almost every NBA front-office opening for the past six years or so. His name has echoed throughout board rooms for the very same reasons he was able to help make Syracuse a national champion — his ability to identify good basketball players, both highly regarded and overlooked.
The Pistons are in a critical stage, beginning a rebuild with young prospects who appear to be better served as role players. The team needs its Carmelo Anthony, but it also needs an identity and roster capable of sustained success.
Putting that together, from everything you hear, is what Weaver does best.
“A lot of teams made a mistake by not hiring him. He’s put his hands on a lot of impact players,” said Mike Sumner, a childhood friend of Weaver’s. Sumner coached the D.C. Assault AAU team, which reached the 1996 AAU Tournament of Champions, with Weaver in the mid ’90s. “He definitely has that trait. He might be one of the best at that. It comes from his home.”
Maryland’s Prince George’s County is a basketball factory, a breeding ground for some of the game’s greats of both past and present. Durant hails from there. The Pacers’ Victor Oladipo, too. Adrian Dantley, Steve Francis and the late Len Bias paved the way for the newer generation of stars who frequently seem to pop up from this area.
Weaver grew up a stone’s throw away from this hoops hotbed. His family, Sumner describes, are “sports nuts,” and he can recall countless times huddling with them in the living room while some sport with a ball was on television.
“They know all the players,” Sumner said.
Weaver never played high-level basketball, but he earned respect in his region through his knowledge of the game and his resources. Weaver went to Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C., and played one year of college ball at Prince George’s Community College before obtaining his associate’s degree and moving on to Bowie State University. When Sumner approached him about constructing the D.C. Assault, Weaver was working players out at a local gym. Weaver also had a connection with a rep at Nike. Sumner saw Weaver as a someone who could propel the AAU program in more ways than one.
Immediately, Weaver started finding players who would help turn the Assault into a national brand. One overlooked player identified by Weaver as a “must-get” was Cliff Hawkins, a freshman guard from Virginia’s Potomac High School who was not yet a household name beyond the local area.
“When we first saw him, that was a guy we didn’t think was a high-major player before he got to us,” Sumner said of Hawkins, who ended up being one of the top guards in the country, winning Virginia’s Mr. Basketball award as a senior at Oak Hill Academy and playing collegiately at Kentucky. “Troy liked him.”
Weaver also found Josh Pace, a 6-foot-5 lefty who was a key contributor off the bench during Syracuse’s national title run, through the AAU circuit.
Pace was playing for an AAU team in his home state of Georgia when he went up against the Weaver-coached Assault during his junior year. Pace recalls having a good game. A few years later, he was weighing his college options but keen on leaving Georgia. Weaver, having joined the college ranks by then, circled back and began recruiting him.
“Syracuse turned into the right fit for me because of Coach Weaver and the relationship we built,” said Pace, who now coaches the women’s team at Western New Mexico. “He kept it real with me and broke down the situation. They had guards similar to me before me. He told me I could come in and play my game. He knew what Boeheim was looking for and thought I’d fit it.”
Boeheim recalls Weaver attracting far more recruits like Pace than Anthony, of course. Weaver, Boeheim said, spotlighted C.J. Fair, a swingman from Baltimore who Rivals ranked as 94th in the 2010 recruiting class. He ended up averaging 16.5 points per game his senior year at Syracuse. Down the line, by then in the NBA, Weaver called Boeheim and told him to check out an underclassman at DeMatha High School in Hyattsville, Md., by the name of Jerami Grant.
Grant, a scrawny kid with long arms, wasn’t really on the national radar. But Boeheim, who had all the trust in the world in Weaver at this point, started looking into him.
“My sister, who lived in the area, called and said, ‘Why are you even recruiting him? He’s not even All-City,'” Boeheim said. “But Troy liked him, and we liked him, of course. And now Grant has started to establish himself in the NBA.”
Grant was a second-round pick in 2014 who averaged 11.6 points in 64 games last season for the Nuggets. In 2018-19, he averaged 13.6 points in 80 games for the Thunder.
“Troy would always say … ‘That guy is really good, and I don’t know if we can get him, but we can get this other guy,'” Boeheim said. “That’s so important because, in college, anyone can say we want to get LeBron or Zion or one of those guys, but you can’t get those guys. You can see a guy rated 80th in the country and you think he’s a pro, and he is. It’s not that simple, even at a high level, to forecast what they’ll be. The more experience you have, the better you’ll be, and I think Troy is a very good evaluator.”
These players Weaver has helped usher into programs all commit based off who Troy, the person, is. Just ask Ricardo Greer, a star at Pittsburgh from 1997-2001, when Weaver was working as an assistant under head coach Ralph Willard.
Greer remembers walking into practice as if he had been living in a bunker for the last seven months. His facial hair was untamed, scruffy and off-putting. That day, Weaver pulled him aside and forced him to think about the bigger picture.
“He said to me, ‘What are you doing?'” said Greer, who is now an assistant coach at the University of Dayton. “I said back, ‘What do you mean, Coach?’ He told me that wasn’t a good look for me. He told me that I need to be clean-cut and represent myself in a different light. He went on to say that kids are watching me, and I need to be presentable at all times.
“That stuck with me to this day. I try to maintain that professionalism because of those words that he said to me 20 years ago.”
The Pistons needed several boxes to be checked before crowning their next general manager. Talent evaluation was of the utmost importance. So were player and people relationships. In a profession that welcomes courting at the highest level, having someone who can walk side by side with different types of life goes a long way.
Ultimately, it should all culminate into winning — or at least Detroit hopes it does. Weaver was the man for this job, at this time. His experiences through basketball all were precursors to this moment. Whether he can deliver is another thing, but we do know he’s positioned himself to succeed.
Now, it’s just a waiting game.
“He’s very good at seeing talent and organizing and structuring, whether recruiting or getting players to buy in,” Pace said. “His reliability off the court is key. He can identify different personalities and people and put together teams that bring people together to achieve the common goal, which is winning. He wants to build something that’ll last, a structure.”
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