Corey Evans
speaker
42 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Corey Evans’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yeah, it's been a long, long process for sure. I would say I had some mistakes along the way, for sure. And that's why I tell a lot of young folks getting in the business, when you're young, make some mistakes, learn and grow. And that's how you get better and figure out what your niche is. I learned early on that relationships were the most important thing in all of the world, right?
Your line of work, my line of work, anything in general. So Starting out to go back about 15 years, I graduated from Old Dominion. I was actually roommates with Kent Bazemore on the NBA side. So it's funny how it all works. And I actually developed some inroads with TJ McConnell when he was in high school. And I actually got on staff for a year at Duquesne.
And I'm actually from Pittsburgh as well. So it was amazing, right? Like you're right out of college. You're 21 years old.
you're back home at duquesne i'm 10 minutes away from my parents i'm coaching tj mcconnell it's we're gonna do this real fast right like we're we're ready to rock and roll and a year later we go 17 and 15 and we get fired so i i found out very very fast how the business of college athletics and everything in line in the world works and it's all about winning in the bottom line so i I was fired.
We were fired on staff there. And I wanted to get back into college basketball and coaching. That was always the pathway for myself that I saw. But I also didn't want to put myself in the spot where a year from then I'd be fired again or go to a place that wasn't conducive for learning and growing and impacting in the right manner. So on a whim. I picked up a scouting service.
I created my own college scouting service for a year or two. I had about 20 programs on board. I was charging about 200 bucks a piece. So you can figure that out. A lot of long days, a lot of long nights, living in my parents' basement there, living in the car on the road. But I just love what I was doing. You know, when you have a passion, it doesn't really matter when you're that young.
You'll know better, right? And but making my way into the industry, I just loved figuring out how people worked and developing the right relationships. And it was authentic. And I think after a while, when you're consistent and you work hard and you build that the right rapport with people, it just keeps building and building and building.
It's almost a 10,000 hour rule. Right. And it's osmosis. It's just being around the game of basketball. Uh, The McConnell thing and the Ken Bazemore thing helped me immensely, right? You have two guys that are the underdog that have no reason to be in the NBA for 10 years, and you're on the ground floor seeing it every day.
So you have that along with the work ethic, along with making mistakes, along with being self-aware enough to say, I better hurry the hell up, man. Like I'm not where I need to be to be where I want to be. So you keep investing every day and around the game and watching and watching and watching. There was a half, I think you can relate naivety to it all.
So you'll know what you don't know, but you also are self-aware enough and hardworking enough and humble enough to be open to not being afraid with being the dumbest guy in the room and keep learning and keep giving and keep trying to be around better people that might teach you.
Yeah, going back on that, Sam Pressy always said, I'm going to bat 300 and you might bat 280. So he's going to be wrong a lot too. So you just might as well just stick to what you believe in and what you see. And as long as you've done the work, Hey, I'm going to get something wrong. You're going to get something wrong.
And you can look back at the Oklahoma city thunder drafting and it's been amazing, but there's also been some misses there as well. But I think a large portion of that is situational base, right? Do you have some players that, like a trade man for us from Oklahoma City. He's more than good enough.
He's an NBA player, but the situation might not have been conducive enough for his role and for his abilities. He's definitely a top 300 player in the NBA. It's just with our roster construction, it wasn't meant to be. So learning that and learning how to specify a role and making sure that they're above a certain threshold elsewhere, makes them good enough, I hope.
But going back in the Oklahoma City thing, it's funny how it all works. I work with a good buddy of mine, Pete Thamel, who was at Yahoo Sports when I was at Rivals. And Pete was actually the editor at the Daily Orange at Syracuse when Carmelo went on the run in 01, I think it was. And at the time, Troy Weaver was the coach responsible for recruiting him to Syracuse.
So Troy and BAML developed a great rapport for 20 years and Pete and I got very close and one thing led to the next and he connected me with Troy Weaver and Troy and I developed inroads to a certain extent over a two, three year timeframe. And that is what kind of led me to Sam Presley and Oklahoma City Thunder eventually. I think Sam wanted someone on the ground floor
Sam called me up one day at USA Basketball in Colorado Springs and said, Corey, would you like to meet tomorrow? Are you in Colorado Springs? Dot, dot, dot. This is Sam. I'm like, who the hell is Sam? Like, what runner is this now? Like, what middleman is this? So it was Sam Presti. And we talked for about four or five hours the next day about where things were going.
And it was a couple months after he traded for Shea Gilgis. And... It was the vision and place he had. He was very resolute with where things were going to go as far as not a complete teardown, but that we just traded Paul George for four first round draft picks. A guy named Shea Gildas Alexander who could be really good in the NBA and that we might have more draft picks on the way.
And we need someone on the ground floor that knows the whole industry, that knows the people in the industry, that knows how the kids think and work. And, you know, I got to thinking, hey, is this the right step for me? It was not an immediate yes. When you become comfortable with where you are and you feel like you're among the very best in your industry, it's a jump, right?
You want to jump over that ledge and burn the boats in a sense, but are you ready for it? And ultimately, again, Ryan, like looking back on it, what a dumb ass, right? Like, why wouldn't you have done that, man? It's where things are now. But at the time, you're going back and forth of, is this the right move or not?
I could talk about that for an hour to be in that room with Sam Presley and Rob Hennigan, former GM of the magic. And now, uh, AC Law, the former A&M star, they know where they're going and they know what they want. And it's about processing. It's about positional size and versatility. And the most important part is intel.
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