Sydney Kings coach Will Weaver has just finished an extra block of shooting practice with Didi Louzada. The Brazilian, it appears, is reluctant to leave the gym. Weaver yells from his vantage point down the court, alternating between English and some halting Spanish -- Louzada understands a little -- imploring him to go home.
"Don't make me come down there!" Weaver playfully warns his Next Star, who with some reluctance ultimately defers to the demands of his coach.
Louzada has every right to feel aggrieved considering the example set by Weaver - someone who can't seem to turn his mind off basketball, such is his obsession with the game.
During the FIBA World Cup in China earlier this year, Weaver would spend late nights texting his Sydney Kings assistants -- after he finished scouting Boomers opponents -- about ideas for practices.
Returning from the arduous World Cup campaign, Weaver could not get enough of basketball. Instead, he flew to Devonport to rendezvous with the team at the preseason Blitz. As he arrived at the hotel, barely squeaking in before a morning team meeting, players streamed into the conference room. He was struck by the scene.
The group were arrayed around a table, and a raucous game broke out which featured a ball, some cups, and sketchy rules centred around picking the cup which housed the ball. The loser of the game would front media obligations that day.
Afterwards, what Weaver remembers most is gathering the players around that same table and seeing their faces. The eyes. They sparkled with excitement. He could sense the pride and trust. This meant something. This was a group who cared.
People matter, and that is the overriding philosophy which guides Will Weaver as he masterminds a surging Kings team that are early title favourites.
Weaver has coached for 17 years across stints in college (University of Texas, Sam Houston State), and the NBA (Philadelphia 76ers and Brooklyn Nets). He coached Brooklyn's G League affiliate, the Long Island Nets, last season.
The common thread among those stops was the value of empowering people and creating a culture of transparency.
"He's not a guy that gets fired up too much," says Andrew Bogut of Weaver's style. "He's actually very, very calm at times where he probably has an excuse to get a little wild. But he's direct and honest. I mean, in this business if you're not honest, not only are you lying to yourself, you're lying to guys. They'll start to lose confidence and trust in you. He's going to tell you, 'hey, you're not going to play for me if you do this. And you'll play for me if you go this.' That's all you can ask for as a professional athlete. I think that's the main reason why we've got a lot of guys on this team that have a great respect for him."
During his time with the 76ers and the Nets, Weaver recalls both Brett Brown and Kenny Atkinson would demand input from players. They wanted players to shape their workplace.
"Fellas, nobody texted me after practice yesterday. None of you guys," Weaver tells ESPN, impersonating either Brown or Atkinson, or both. "What did you see? What should we do tomorrow? What are you reading? What games did you watch?"
Leadership was about collaboration, and it's something that he has brought to the Kings. Weaver not only texts players, he will call them, share meals, any chance to pick their brains, in his quest to create a flat structure in which individual thought is nurtured and valued.
"That comes back to me," says Weaver. "Is this the kind of place where it's easy to work? Is it a fun environment? Do people want to come to work? Are people miserable with each other?"
According to Bogut, there is the aura of professionalism and preparation that Weaver has brought, and which the team has embraced.
"We watch a lot of film," says Bogut. "We're getting clips before bed every night in our group chats about scouts, about our offence."
"All of that stuff comes from just frank, open conversation and really from getting a group of people together that cares," says Weaver. "If they're not watching tape, if they're not looking for [the] scouting report, if they're not talking amongst each other, if they're not thinking about their match ups, if they're not studying their finishing, if they're not working on their three-point [shot], all that stuff just comes from do you care or not."
Mitch Creek calls him Doctor Strange. Creek spent time with Weaver at the Long Island Nets last season, and the reference to the Marvel character is more about Weaver's physical appearance. Still, for Creek, Weaver is a quirky guy who uses weird analogies that somehow, mystically, get the message across.
"He gets to you on a player's level," Creek tells ESPN. "He's not your typical do-this, do-that. He's going to come and ask you questions. He's going to come and care about your family. He's going to come and make sure he's got an arm around you when you need it. He definitely encapsulates what a complete coach really is."
Brooklyn Nets swingman, Theo Pinson, who starred for Weaver at Long Island -- Weaver, by the way, is incredibly high on his prospects with Brooklyn -- calls him "a magnificent basketball mind".
"The way he knows the game and studies the game is one of the most fascinating things from getting to know him," Pinson tells ESPN. "Talking basketball with him, has been one of the blessings of my life. He's a really brilliant basketball mind."
Weaver preached that collective success was a breeding ground for the riches that would flow on to an individual. At the core of that notion is trust - the trust you have in your coach, and your teammates, to adhere to this vision. The Nets made the G League Finals last season.
"Everyone on our team is doing well right now because of the success that we had as a team," says Pinson. Weaver was able to align team success with individual development.
The career of the Doctor Strange of Australian basketball certainly does feel like a one in fourteen million convergence.
Weaver's basketball coaching journey improbably started as he considered his options for college. He wanted a career that was family-oriented, competitive to keep his energy, yet meaningful. He even considered law school. His mentor advised him that he did not know many happy lawyers, but the coaches he had come across seemed to enjoy it. He had coached fifth and sixth grade boys for two decades - he invited Weaver to volunteer. Weaver would be paid in hamburgers.
"I think I got one hamburger out of the deal," says Weaver. "I'm pretty sure on that ledger I came up empty."
After his first session, he was hooked. Weaver would draw plays whilst in college classes, and rush over to practice once he had finished each day.
Weaver would eventually work under Rick Barnes at the Longhorns, where a certain freshman class included Kevin Durant, D.J. Augustin, Damion James and Dexter Pittman. As a grad assistant, he was able to build relationship with the players, so much so that they would come to an intramural game featuring Weaver. Durant even did scorebook duty for that game.
Weaver would then move to the Sam Houston State program. In Houston, he would meet Sam Hinkie. Weaver's wife, Lauren, who attended medical school in Houston, then had residency at Philadelphia. So he moved to Philly with her.
"He called me about a month into moving to Philly where I had no prospects," Weaver says of Hinkie.
Hinkie wanted Weaver to help him prepare for his run at the role of Sixers general manager. For nine days, Weaver locked himself in his home, reading everything, watching film, compiling reports and emailing them to Hinkie. Hinkie called him every day, between 6-7pm when he was driving home after work at the Rockets. They would talk about Weaver's compilations - the Sixers ultimately promoted Tony DiLeo from within, but the experience for Weaver was invaluable.
The next fall, Weaver received an alert on his phone that Hinkie had been announced as the new general manager of the 76ers. He wanted Weaver on board.
"It really was like a start-up kind of feel," says Weaver of those initial years at the Sixers. During his tenure, he and Brett Brown would spend countless hours together in a room, thinking about the team, the program, and after timeout plays. They bonded and formed a close relationship.
"Just an amazing education being next to him," says Weaver.
During "The Process", partly to distract Brown from all the losing, Weaver would pick his brain about international basketball and the Boomers program.
Hinkie was infamous for masterminding "The Process", but was largely a mysterious figure who developed a reputation for treating players as numbers and assets to be parlayed. But for those within the organisation, he was embraced as a generous man who pushed people forward for opportunities and ascension.
Hinkie would say, "What I care about is drafting good players and hiring good people. Everything else takes care of itself."
Weaver took note. The churn of players throughout the process enabled him to build upon a vast player network, ranging from Jerami Grant, JaKarr Sampson, and Vander Blue to Brandon Davies. Meanwhile, he was also building his front office network -- Weaver would hop from department to department -- from scouting to jumping into the draft once the season was over, to working on hires.
Weaver learnt the value of filling an organisation with good people, and bringing together high achievers where grand ideas were incubated and allowed to foam and froth. Who would rise to the top? Who -- like the players -- had that upside?
After a few years, Lauren, who specialised in child neurology, was offered a fellowship at Columbia in New York. Weaver told her to pursue it. The Nets had just hired Sean Marks, and Weaver knew enough about him through discussions with Brown. The Nets then hired Atkinson - Weaver already knew Atkinson as someone who had interviewed for the Sixers job.
So, Weaver approached Brown about his interest in potentially joining the Nets because of his wife's move, but also because he felt he could offer his experiences from what he had learnt about building a program from scratch. Brown reeled.
"Hell no, what are you doing?!" Brown exclaimed. "We're building something!" The next day, Brown came back and said "of course I'll help."
"He's such an ethical person, and generous person," says Weaver.
That notion of "good people" was hammered home at Brooklyn with Nets general manager, Sean Marks, who nurtured a culture of disagreement.
"We wanted disagreement," says Weaver. "We cultivated disagreement. Once we came to a decision, we all committed to it and moved forward."
Marks was someone who created deep relationships, but at the same time was prepared to have hard conversations and foment the value of transparency, thus building trust.
Speaking of trust, Creek had entrusted Weaver with helping him to achieve his ambitions to get to the NBA. He remembers Weaver calling him to break the news that he had been called up to Brooklyn.
"He's pretty much in tears," says Creek. "I can tell he's holding it back. He was so excited to be able to give me that call. I know that one phone call to him meant more than maybe a lot of other phone calls have in the past. He knew how much it meant to me."
Weaver agrees that it was one of the more special phone calls "in my life". "I count that as definitely one of the most special moments in my career," he says.
All of those experiences reinforced to Weaver that at the heart of it all, good people make great organisations.
Weaver recalls Brown referring to certain players as "everyday people" - those who really cared, sought continuous learning, and were "awesome" people you would enjoy spending time with.
"There are just a lot of those 'awesome' people here," Weaver says of the Kings. "That's something that Paul [Smith] was very clear about from the beginning."
Weaver remembers Andrew Bogut, in 2015, playing through a debilitating back condition in Wellington -- and dominating -- to guide the Boomers past the Tall Blacks for a Rio berth. He remembers Bogut receiving around-the-clock treatment in his bid to be fit for the Rio campaign after sustaining a traumatic knee injury in the 2016 NBA Finals. Aleks Maric was brought over as cover, eyes wide open that he would not play if Bogut was fit. Maric is now on staff for the Kings.
"Just watching Bogut go through that, and persevere through that, made me feel like that is one of the best teammates you could ever hope for," says Weaver.
After Rio, they stayed in touch. Weaver sought the advice of Bogut about coming to the NBL as an opportunity arose the year before - that was at the time when Bogut himself was considering the league. They spoke and connected over values they believed were integral to a work environment. Bogut would later introduce Weaver to Smith.
After a few conversations with Smith, Weaver thought, "Oh man, this dude's real. And experienced, and funny, and unselfish, and cares, and is hungry to build something great."
As the dust settled and Weaver took the job, Casper Ware was the first player prioritised in this rebuild. Ware was one of those "awesome" people.
"You've got the chance to get two of the smartest, toughest, most unselfish two-way players in the league on the same team," says Weaver. "My NBA experience tells me that it's a smart plan, and we should try to bend our roster around that, if we can."
Just like that, the Kings had their two pillars in Ware and Bogut. "Two of them," Weaver corrects me. "Everybody helps hold up the ceiling. But those guys are pretty stocky - they're built of some tough material."
Weaver contends that there are a colonnade of "awesome" people who prop up the best defence in the league, and who have bought into an unselfish style of play. Of course, like all coaches, Weaver is far from satisfied; he laments the team's offensive efficiency.
Weaver likes the pressure and the stakes of coaching Sydney - it's why he coaches. He is excited to build a program that not only contends now, but attains success over the long haul. He also shuts down any premature talk of titles.
"Instead, trying to build a place where you play harder than everybody else in the league," says Weaver, "and you create a pipeline of talent to last for a long time - coaches, and medical staff, and players. That is more process-focused and something that is more attainable. And I also think will put you in position to win a trophy at some stage."
The first step of that journey is complete as Weaver empowers people toward success. Every single player, assistant coach and staffer is crucial in this journey. They are the everyday people.