Barber: Chico Averbuck rejoins David Griffin with Pelicans

For approximately a year and a half, Sonoma County was home to two interconnected NBA figures. Philip “Chico” Averbuck, who grew up locally and still lives in Santa Rosa, was a longtime scout working for the Cleveland Cavaliers. His former boss, David Griffin, had settled in Sonoma after getting fired as the Cavaliers’ general manager.

It was never meant to last long. Griffin, who had assembled enough talent around LeBron James to wrest the NBA championship from the Warriors in 2016, was too highly regarded in basketball circles to remain a TV/radio analyst. Sure enough, the New Orleans Pelicans made him their executive vice president of basketball operations last April. Griffin and his wife, Meredith, maintain a home in Sonoma, but are living primarily in New Orleans.

Over lunch this week, ?Averbuck admitted he hadn’t seen a ton of Griffin during those 18 months of coexistence.

“He lives in Sonoma, I live in Santa Rosa. I worked for the guy in Cleveland for six years,” he said. “But it was maybe once every three to four months. Despite that, anytime we got together, it was like we’d just seen each other. There was comfort in our silence. And it wasn’t awkward.”

Now they are teammates again, their proximity converted from the geographic to the professional. Griffin hired ?Averbuck to his scouting staff last September.

This was a major displacement for Averbuck, who had worked for Cleveland for 15 years and had survived the regimes of five different general managers (Griffin being the fourth). He insists he wasn’t shopping for a new organization.

“There’s that unknown of leaving that at my age,” Averbuck said. “You always think about, is it really greener on the other side? I know we may not be as competitive in Cleveland as we were in previous years. But is there a value in just staying where you’re at? The relationships that you build, the friendships you make with the other people in the organization. It may sound corny, but travel, expense reports, IT department…”

Nobody wants to reset all of that stuff, least of all a 53-year-old scout who had done things the same way for years.

What sold Averbuck on the move isn’t complicated to explain. It was David Griffin. Those who follow the Warriors have long noticed the touchy-feely way we all tend to describe general manager Bob Myers and coach Steve Kerr. People don’t just compliment their abilities. They have genuine affection and deep admiration for Myers and Kerr as people.

Griffin and Kerr worked together in the Phoenix Suns’ front office from 2004 to 2010. It’s kind of surprising that Griffin hasn’t found his way to Golden State, because you hear him described in very Warrior-y terms.

Averbuck certainly talks about him that way, describing a “human reflective side” to Griffin that he hasn’t seen in other NBA executives.

“Not so much about trading, and signing, and winning and losing games,” Averbuck said. “It was that other ‘people’ side. He’s different. The way that he lives his own life is transformed into the way he treats people. And that was the biggest draw that made it really, really easy for me in leaving Cleveland to go to New Orleans.”

That is true despite the fact that Averbuck, once again, rarely sees Griffin face to face. He’s at Pelicans headquarters maybe once every month and a half or two months for multi-day staff meetings. Beyond that, Averbuck’s life is on the road.

“I’m not gonna be there at all,” he said of New Orleans. “But knowing that’s what represents our franchise, that’s the person that I work for? Couldn’t put a price tag on it.”

It wasn’t just Griffin’s personality that drew the scout. It was the opportunity to reinvent a scouting operation from scratch. For now, the Pelicans are mostly using the template left in place by the previous administration, with some tweaks. But the idea is to remake it all over the next year or two, following Griffin’s vision. And Averbuck is deeply involved in the construction.

“Whereas before I’m just getting on my computer or laptop, entering information in certain areas and that was it,” he said. “But now I really can see that I am having some type of influence on our scouting process.”

It’s hard work, though. Averbuck estimates the Cavaliers employed 15 full-time scouts. The Pelicans have six, three on the NBA side and three on the college side, with plenty of overlap. All of them file reports directly to Griffin and general manager Trajan Langdon.

Averbuck is technically one of the college scouts, but he has never fit easily into one box. His expertise has always been in young, developing players, but that could mean anything from a kid at Fresno State to a power forward in the G League to a raw first- or second-year player on a rival NBA team.

That’s still the case in New Orleans - with one big exception. Whenever I had interviewed Averbuck in the past, he was always just returning from, or preparing for, a scouting trip to Athens or Shanghai or Tel Aviv. He still breaks down foreign players, but he now does it via Internet feeds and videos. The Pelicans took the international travel off his plate.

Averbuck felt a huge relief at first. Now he can admit to missing those overseas assignments in some ways.

“That hole, I didn’t realize was that strong in my deal,” he said. “That void. At first it was somewhat exhilarating that I didn’t have to fly from San Francisco to Paris and Paris to Madrid. Or San Francisco to Frankfurt and Frankfurt to Belgrade, Serbia. But to tell you the truth, I miss that culture. Of being able to live for, maybe it’s only for 24 to 48 hours in Madrid, Spain. There’s a value to that.”

He added: “I’ve got like a basketball jones to get on a plane for 13 hours, and go across the pond and see someone play. And feel absolutely wiped out because you’re 10 hours’ difference from the West Coast, and you can’t keep your eyes open. There’s something exhilarating about that.”

Not that Averbuck’s job has gotten cushier. He’s still on the road for 12 to 15 days in a typical month. Friday, he leaves for Auburn, Alabama. The last trip he took was Santa Rosa to San Diego to Lexington, Kentucky, to Memphis to Indianapolis to Lubbock, Texas, then home. Nine days, six college games, two college practices, one NBA game.

It’s a grind that he has come to accept, and even to love. Rather than getting worn down by his profession, Averbuck is feeling invigorated by a new role. He’ll keep plugging away, critiquing the strengths and weaknesses of a thousand young basketball players, as long as there are planes to get him there.

“Hopefully, Sonoma County Airport’s still gonna get bigger and bigger,” Averbuck said.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.