A chair that sat empty since May
Cleveland ran an entire draft and an entire offseason without a general manager. That ended Friday. ESPN reported that Brandon Weems, the franchise’s assistant GM until now, has been promoted into the job.
The vacancy dated back to spring, when Mike Gansey left to become president of basketball operations in Philadelphia. Nobody filled it in the meantime.
Weems reports directly to Koby Altman, the franchise president. Nothing changes structurally. Altman still sets the direction, the GM builds the roster underneath him.
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Eleven years, one organization
Weems is 40 and has worked for exactly one NBA team. Scout in 2015. Director of recruiting from 2017 to 2021. Senior director of player personnel from 2021 to 2022. Assistant GM from 2022 on.
College before that: Kentucky from 2009 to 2012, then Oakland from 2013 to 2015.
The internal climb tells you how Cleveland runs things. Senior hires rarely come from outside. The front office promotes people who have watched a few cycles turn over from the inside, and Weems arrived in time for the run that ended with the 2016 title, then sat through the rebuild and the long walk back.
The LeBron connection everyone is already talking about
One line of his biography is doing the rounds. Weems played high school ball with LeBron James at St. Vincent-St. Mary in Akron. They have known each other since they were teenagers.
That kind of history always gets people speculating about who might turn up on the roster. It is not a plan, though. Weems inherits a team that is already built, carrying some heavy contracts signed over the last few seasons, with its competitive window open now rather than later.
The trade deadline is when we find out what he actually wants to do with it.
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