While most of the rest of the city slept, on some July mornings Phil Weber sat in his Las Vegas hotel room at 6 a.m., watching video of the 2014-15 New Orleans Pelicans. As one of Alvin Gentry’s assistants perused clips from Synergy – the service that sorts basketball video for future viewing, often by coaches – his excitement for next season continued to build.
“I’m giddy,” a smiling Weber said during NBA Summer League, after another extended Pelicans film session. “I go on Synergy a lot, just to see how everything will fit. I mean, (this New Orleans roster) has shooting, playmaking, length. We have arguably the best player in the league. We also have quality people – I’ve been floored by the level of character on this team. You don’t win in this league unless you’re all together and have high character. You just don’t.”
Weber has done a lot of winning since coming to the NBA as a Phoenix assistant in 1999. He spent nine seasons on the Suns’ sideline, contributing to the most successful era in that franchise’s history, including an average of 58 victories over his final four years, highlighted by two Western Conference finals trips. After a stint in New York under prior Phoenix head coach Mike D’Antoni, Weber was an offensive consultant for Miami in 2012-14; the Heat won back-to-back championships, using small-ball concepts taken from the prolific, D’Antoni-led Suns. Those same innovative ideas were part of San Antonio’s 2014 Finals triumph (the Spurs swapped out center Tiago Splitter for versatile Boris Diaw) as well as Golden State’s in 2015 (the Warriors replaced big Andrew Bogut with do-everything wing Andre Iguodala to turn around their series vs. Cleveland). In other words, every recent NBA champion has leaned on a strategy that first gained prominence during the previous decade under Phoenix’s staff, which featured D’Antoni, Weber and new Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry.
A Long Island native, Weber believes one reason the Suns were so successful on the court was a bond between coaches and players, something the Pelicans will try to build under Gentry. New Orleans players have already begun the process of acclimating to Gentry’s up-tempo system, with veterans such as Tyreke Evans, Eric Gordon and Quincy Pondexter attending Pelicans summer league games, to get a glimpse of how the team will operate in the fall.
New Orleans has one of the NBA’s youngest rosters, with nearly every player still in his 20s and a lineup dotted by lottery picks and first-rounders who haven’t yet reached their prime. That was also an appealing consideration for Weber when he decided to come to the Crescent City.
“We have shooting, ballhandling, length and speed,” Weber said of the Pelicans. “We have a stud, a guy who has only tapped into where he can go in our minds. It’s going to be so exciting to figure it out, how it comes together on the floor. With our roster here, we have the makings of some amazing pieces for what (Gentry) runs.”
Weber was one prominent character in Sports Illustrated writer Jack McCallum’s phenomenal book “Seven Seconds or Less,” which provided an all-access account of the fast-breaking, 2005-06 Suns. That team won 54 games and reached the conference finals, which remains uncharted territory for New Orleans. With few roster changes this summer, one of the Pelicans’ biggest priorities entering 2015-16 will be building communication between players and coaches.
“In Phoenix, we all had the same mindset and the trust – which is a really good word – because there was trust within the players and trust between the players and coaching staff,” Weber said. “It just flowed and just worked. There’s always a trust factor. We’ll have to establish that here, and then the players will get it and see it. From there, who knows (what is possible) with this lineup?”