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 Weltman |
“I went over to his studio in Lodi, New Jersey,” Weltman says 19 years later as the newly hired Pistons director of basketball administration. “He had like 10 VCR-to-VCR hookups and he showed me how to hook up a VCR to a VCR. That was my video knowledge. When I walked into the Clippers’ place, it was like a war zone – VCRs on the floor, TVs turned over on their side.”
It might have been a daunting challenge to others, but Weltman was born to the job. His father, Harry Weltman, was general manager of the Spirits of St. Louis of the old ABA and later for both Cleveland and New Jersey in the NBA. What didn’t come to him naturally, the Clippers were only too happy to give the eager young college graduate the room to grow into the job. An organization notorious for its penny-pinching, the Clippers asked Weltman to do a little of everything.
“The Clippers were the last team to have one assistant coach,” Weltman said. “Gene Shue was the head coach. Don Casey was the assistant. I was (personnel director) Barry Hecker’s assistant, but I did just as much work for Don Casey. It was a 24-hour-a-day job. It was an unbelievable amount of work, but I learned so much the first two years and then I just outlasted everybody.”
Weltman stayed with the Clippers from ’88 until taking a job as assistant GM to Kiki Vandeweghe in Denver prior to the 2001-02 season, working alongside 10 head coaches and staffs in that time, which allowed him to build a vast network of friends and contacts. Among them was Pistons vice president of basketball John Hammond, who served as an assistant coach with the Clippers first under Larry Brown and later under Alvin Gentry.
When friction developed between Vandeweghe and Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke and Vandeweghe lost his job, Weltman and most others he’d brought in were eventually replaced, as well. So Weltman spent the 2006-07 season on the sidelines for the first time since leaving Oberlin, working for ESPN.
“They wanted an executive who had knowledge of the (salary) cap to be their shadow GM is the way they approached me,” he said. “It was intriguing to me. I wanted to do some stuff that maybe hadn’t been done before and we pulled off a couple of things I felt pretty good about and had a lot of fun doing it. And for the first time in 19 years, I got to not travel. I have 2-year-old twin daughters, so it was a great time for me to catch my breath, stay in the loop, stay busy and get to spend some time with my family.”
Though he immersed himself in the ESPN job, Weltman knew once the off-season arrived – with the typical liberal personnel movement that accompanies it – that job opportunities would likely present themselves to someone with nearly two decades of high-level experience. And when Scott Perry left his job as Pistons director of player personnel last month to become assistant GM in Seattle, Dumars told Hammond he wanted Weltman.
“That was Joe’s call, 100 percent,” Hammond said. “I’ve known him personally and known him professionally and Joe’s had the opportunity to meet him over the last few years. Joe brought it to my attention, saying how lucky we’d be to get somebody like Jeff. He said, ‘I want to get the very best person possible for this job.’
“He’s got tons of experience, been around the game his whole life, grew up in the game. His father was a GM himself. So at the ripe old age of however old he is, 41 or 42, he’s a lifer. He’s a great addition.”
Weltman knew well of the Pistons’ league-wide reputation for running a first-class ship that encourages free thinkers and doesn’t create the climate that breeds risk-averse managers fearful of second-guessing.
“Joe has done an amazing job of creating such a unique environment here that’s known throughout the league,” he said. “To be a part of that, when John first called, really excited me. I can tell you, now that I’ve seen it firsthand and witnessed how the draft was conducted and the way people who work there feel about the organization, it’s everything that I’ve heard about it and I can tell you it’s very unique. There aren’t many situations like this.”
The bulk of Weltman’s duties for the Pistons will be focused on draft preparation.
“My goal right now is to fit in and learn the Piston way,” he said. “The first line of order is to fill Scott’s shoes, and they’re big shoes to fill. Scott did a great job. I want to pick up where Scott left off and beyond that, anything Joe wants me to do.”
Because as the kid who drove 2,500 miles across country fresh out of Oberlin learned almost 20 years ago, when you can do a little bit of everything you tend to stick around for a while.
