Thunder assistant GM Troy Weaver interviews with Blazers

The last time the Blazers were hunting for a new general manager, they looked to Oklahoma City and hired Sam Presti’s assistant GM Rich Cho. That didn’t work out so well.

But that’s not stopping the Blazers from trying again.

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, the Blazers interviewed Thunder assistant GM Troy Weaver for their recently vacant position.

Weaver met with Blazers officials about replacing Rich Cho, who worked with Weaver under Oklahoma City Thunder GM Sam Presti.

Weaver has progressed rapidly as an executive, rising from a personnel director with the Utah Jazz to the No. 2 spot in Oklahoma City. Weaver is considered an excellent evaluator of talent, and is well-connected on every level of the game. He pushed hard for the Thunder to draft point guard Russell Westbrook out of the UCLA with the fourth overall pick in the 2008 draft, higher than any NBA executive had projected Westbrook to go.

As Woj mentions, Weaver was kind of the guy to push for Westbrook and has been pretty integral with Presti in evaluating talent. I’ve been told by some that would know that Weaver was a big part of pushing to make the Jeff Green trade happen.

So it would obviously be a bummer to lose him but that’s the price of success. When you do well and build a sterling reputation like the Thunder front office has, your people are going to be hot commodities. I guess that’s good. Just means that Presti might have to do a little front office talent evaluating again to replace him.