In Warriors country, Santa Rosa’s Philip Averbuck is all about Cavaliers

OAKLAND - Philip Averbuck, known to all as Chico, has lived in Sonoma County most of his life, and currently resides in Santa Rosa. He loves the place. He treasures the people there. Just the same, he told his son Sam recently, it may be time to make that license-plate frame disappear for a while.

You see, Sam Averbuck is a Cleveland Cavaliers fan. So is everybody in the household, and you can hardly blame them, because Chico Averbuck has worked for the Cavs for more than a decade. He is their director of international scouting.

Now, with Cleveland poised to face the Bay Area’s beloved Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals - Game 1 is here Thursday night - Chico is feeling a bit like a paratrooper who just landed behind enemy lines.

“Since the conference finals have ended, yeah,” Averbuck said. “Now it’s the Warriors versus the Cavs. Prior to that I could still wear my Cavalier gear and get by without anyone saying anything. The last four or five days, people haven’t been looking at me so friendly anymore. I’m doing my shopping at like 6 a.m. or at like 10 p.m.”

Though he grew up in the Sebastopol area and starred for the El Molino High basketball team, Averbuck was never a huge Warriors fan as a child.

But he did have one strong tie to the team, starting right around the time they won the 1975 NBA championship - the only one they have claimed since moving to California from Philadelphia in 1962. From fourth through seventh grade, Averbuck was a regular at the summer basketball camp that Phil Smith and Bob Gaillard ran at Sonoma State.

Gaillard was a longtime coach at the University of San Francisco. Smith, as anyone who remembers their 1970s basketball will volunteer, was a pinpoint shooting guard who scored better than 17 points a game in six seasons with the Warriors.

“I wasn’t a Golden State Warrior fan, even though I was just absolutely enamored by Phil Smith,” Averbuck said. “He was the first pro basketball player that I really followed.”

A few decades later, Averbuck has another connection to the team. One of his closest mentors in basketball is Ron Adams, currently an assistant coach known as the Warriors’ defensive mastermind.

“If it wasn’t for Coach Adams,” Averbuck said, “I doubt if I would be where I am today.”

Averbuck played for Rider University and Cal State Bakersfield after high school, but soon realized his future in the game would be as a scout. He worked for Peristeri B.C., a pro basketball team in Greece, then found himself scouting for the short-lived Chicago Rockers of the Continental Basketball Association.

At the NBA’s pre-draft camp in Chicago one year in the mid-1990s, Averbuck found himself sitting next to a Portland Trail Blazers player personnel scout, Ron Adams. The two men hit it off immediately. Both were drawn to the international game, and they liked talking about a wide range of worldly topics, though both were dedicated basketball nerds.

“Chico’s a good human being,” Adams said Monday after a Warriors practice. “He’s engaging, and he has a real love for the game. He’s not a guy with a lot of clutter in his professional life. And by that I simply mean he likes what he does and he does it extremely well.”

Averbuck appreciated that the more established Adams always treated him as an equal. If any of the Trail Blazers’ staff had a question about a CBA player, Adams would call Averbuck over and solicit his opinion. He also taught the younger scout how to go about his business. Averbuck says he still has the notes he compiled under Adams’ tutelage, and refers to them every two or three months.

“He laid the foundation and groundwork on how I scout and evaluate today,” Averbuck said. “And I mean from A to Z. I’m talking about travel, who your contacts are, who can be trusted, who shouldn’t be trusted, when’s the best time to go evaluate a player, what questions you should ask, what are you looking for, how to follow up, how to use video, how to use analytics.”

And then Adams’ assistance became even more tangible. When the Milwaukee Bucks hired him as assistant coach in 1998, he recommended Averbuck to fill his former position in Portland. The Trail Blazers agreed with Adams’ assessment and hired Averbuck.

“I’ve tried to help a lot of people in the league, and Chico is one of them,” said Adams, who also coached with the Spurs, 76ers, Thunder, Bulls and Celtics before joining Steve Kerr’s staff in Oakland. “And some things worked out in that regard, and I’m happy that they did. But he’s a very easy person to recommend … because I know what he represents as a professional and as a human being.”

One of Averbuck’s bosses in Portland was Jim Paxson, the assistant general manager. Four years later, Paxson was the GM in Cleveland, and he hired Averbuck to head the Cavaliers’ international scouting operation, and to cover West Coast colleges. Averbuck still has the job.

He and Adams have remained close over the years, updating one another perhaps monthly via text and phone.

“When you talk to him, he’s an encyclopedia,” Averbuck said. “And I consider him someone to tap if I have a question. He’d be someone I’d bounce ideas off.”

Averbuck has thrived as a scout. Whereas coaches like Adams see ball movement and set plays when they watch a basketball game, Averbuck sees individual players and the specific strengths and weaknesses they bring to the game. He loves the job.

And yet there are times the life of a scout can be a burden. On Tuesday, Averbuck left to scout in Italy. So when the team that employs him plays for the NBA title Thursday and Sunday, about 65 miles from his home, he will be nine time zones away trying to unearth the next Danilo Gallinari.

It pains Averbuck not to be at Oracle Arena for the finals. This is a guy who has fully committed to Cleveland Cavaliers basketball. He can still remember exactly where he was - watching ESPN in his hotel room in Las Vegas, where he was scouting the LeBron James Skills Academy during the NBA Summer League, right around 10:30 a.m. - when he learned that James was returning to Cleveland.

Averbuck knew what that signing meant for the Cavaliers. And he knows what an NBA championship would mean for the city. The Bay Area has waited 40 years for another basketball title. Cleveland has had an NBA team for 44 years and still pines for its first.

What would winning this series be like for Cleveland?

“It’s the birth of your first child. It’s your wedding date. Graduating from college. Getting your first job,” Averbuck said. “These are benchmarks for an individual. But this would be for a city and a state.”

Everyone can get behind a story like that. Everyone, that is, except for Chico Averbuck’s neighbors, who are pulling hard for the Warriors to thwart the Cavaliers’ dreams.

Phil Barber can be reached at phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter @Skinny_Post