Back in School: The Chris Wallace Interview - Part 2

This is the continuation of an interview Chris Wallace gave exclusively to 3 Shades of Blue. The first part of the interview began with his Blue Ribbon Basketball Digest up to the point he made his first real pick in the draft.

As in the Michael Heisley interview in April, we are presenting the interview in it's entirety and not taking excerpts out to forward any agenda or point of view. We at 3 Shades of Blue hope everyone enjoys the interview and trust our readers to draw whatever conclusions they want from it.

3SOB: So you would say your first hand picked player was Kevin Gamble. Now he ended up playing for the Celtics didn't he? Was he there when you were there?
CW: He played for the Celtics, Kings, the Miami Heat. He was a journeyman but he had a good career though. Now I did a total of three years with them with the amount of traveling I did and responsibilities growing. Then I went to the Denver Nuggets. I lasted there 8 months. Jon Spoelstra took me to the Nuggets with him when became President of the team. He got fired 3 months into a 4 year contract.

3SOB: Was there a change of ownership or what?
CW: No. He came in with new ownership and there was a controversy about a player that got signed, Blair Rasmussen. He was signed to a very hefty salary at the time for a center especially at his level. The General Manager said Jon had signed and Jon said the General Manager did it and it became a kind of hot potato. And he ended up getting fired. So I had just moved out there. I had no contract. I don't know anyone. Lasted eight months there before they brought in a new management team and I got fired. Then I went back to West Virginia and did some work on my magazine and did some work on basketball litigation and I worked for the Clippers and New York for two years on a part time basis out of West Virginia.

The Knicks situation was different because I talked them into, in 1991 or 92 at the beginning of European scouting, sending me to Europe to scout every European and American player playing abroad for 3 weeks. So I got a 3 week trip out of it. It was in Denver, the most important thing I did there, I took my first European trip. I scouted Toni Kukoc when I was there. So with that experience and what I had before it really sparked an interest in international scouting which has become a passion. Then in December of 1993 I went to the Miami Heat.

3SOB: Now when you went to Miami you are no longer just that guy somebody hired. You went there as a major player.
CW: Well I didn't really go there as a major player. I mean everyone involved is a major player because it's not that big. Even a team with the most extensive staff is still a small number of people. It's just a small world and the impetus to make a pick can come from any part of that. Scouts drive it. General Managers drive it. Coaches can come in and drive it. It's really hard to explain unless you've been in it but often there is not a clear cut pipeline like there is in other businesses.

Certain companies may have a research department come up with something and it gets moved to the top, then accounting people come and so on and it's a well defined process. We have all the names in the draft, or virtually all the names - some get added on along the way, then the lives of these players inside the personnel department kind of take a life of their own. This year the General Manager may drive it a bit, another year some guy from the scouts like an international scout might be particularly excited about a player and he drives it. So the ideas and the momentum for the choices come from all over the organization.

3SOB: Well do the Grizzlies have an extensive scouting group?
CW: Yeah we do and you have to understand the difference between our endeavor and football or baseball. You don't have the volume of players these other sports do. For example, baseball has a draft that involves college players as well as high school players that we don't have anymore in the NBA. Baseball also doesn't have an international draft I believe. So the Red Sox, Dodgers and Braves are in fierce competition in places like the Dominican Republic and Venezuela for the next great 15 year old shortstop. So that takes a tremendous amount of manpower with the farm clubs and all. To get ready for some 60 round draft with college and high school players and then stay ahead of the competition in Latin America and the volume of signings of 15 and 16 year olds signing hundreds of them and hope you uncover that next one or two gems.

So there's no way one person would have the familiarity to assess that talent pool and be able to make a decision. In football there obviously more players than even in baseball much less basketball. In football there is only about 13-14 games to judge players in. There is no AAU football. Some players may not even play for 2-3 years too. Players like Willie Parker for the Steelers. He's a star running back now but only gained like 4-500 yards his whole college career. He wasn't even a starter. That's not happening in the NBA. Some guy who's a very minor player and doesn't even start until maybe his last year and doesn't have numbers goes on to become a starter on an NBA team isn't going to happen.

So these other sports don't have the benefit of common competition that we have in the NBA. See these guys play AAU ball. Now we can't go watch them now but you hear about who the best guys are. You know who the best guys are in Memphis, Baltimore and Detroit. These kids rise to the top of the draft. Anyone who looks at the 2008 draft, if you read the internet and read the publications you knew who these guys were since they were 15 or 16 years old. They were separated from their peers. So the top guys in basketball tend to stay in the top. In football picking the top high school guys is more difficult because they may not make it in college. So these other sports have a much larger task as far as the numbers are concerned and they don't get to see the players compete that often.

You know if you went out and tried to scout football games you would find it difficult to see many games. I mean they play some on Thursdays now and maybe you can find a way to see 2 games in person on Saturday but you can't take in many games. We can see games from November all the way through the NCAA tournament almost every night. Thanks to TV we see a lot more in the way of competition with inter-sectional games and pre-season tournaments, post season tournaments so the guys we are looking at go up against each other more often than in football.

We only draft 60 players. Every year there are probably 75 or 80 players that can go in that 60. These other sports you are looking at hundreds. So what I'm getting at is we don't have, or I don't think we have, as arduous a task to see these players. This is where the mechanics of the job take place. You know who the guys are in this game. I mean you can just go off of mock drafts from the beginning of the college season on. You may not have them in the same order but you would have 2/3rds of the lottery. I mean everyone knew O J Mayo was going inside the lottery. Derick Rose, Beasley. They are out there early.

And what also has happened which makes the job easier is the dispersion of this talent. There aren't many NBA players who didn't come from high profile Division 1 schools. The junior college player has virtually dried up. There are almost no small college players of any significance. The historic black schools just aren't putting the players out they used to. The Willis Reed's, the Earl Monroe's, the Bobby Dandridge's. It just doesn't happen anymore. I don't know if there are any NAIA ball players in the league anymore. Maybe Devon George might be an NAIA player. That's like 1 guy out of 400 something players. The Juco players or players coming out of JUCO to Division 1 schools, that has come to a halt. So what we are dealing with is basically big time high school players who came out of the BCS conferences with minor exceptions and the high level European players. So you don't have to go out and beat the bushes like you used to do. We're not trying to outfox the experts for the next great player out of Uzbekistan. These are all known players.

So our object is not discovery. It is catagorizing. Getting those known players in the right order. Now that's no small feat. If you look back at past drafts you'll see that a lot of times the names are all upside down. Every team in the NBA has blown many drafts. Partly because it is an inexact science at best and more I think because of the decision making and the outside stimulas in the process more than people just don't know talent. So my point is having more people, a large group, doesn't neccessarily lend to a better result. Take the top 10 and there are at most 12-13 players being considered for those spots. Everybody knows who they are. The most casual fan can name them because outside of Gallinari they are all branded players. Now the trick is getting them in the right order.

Since I've been in the NBA, which is more than 20 years, there has never been so much manpower devoted to talent aquisition as there is now. More travel, greater use of technology yet the end result is not any better than it was 20 years ago.

to be continued...Part 3