Fiery former Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez loving life as a Detroit Pistons scout
CHICAGO -- Bobby Gonzalez wore one of his lucky blue dress shirts when he went out to dinner here with work colleagues Tuesday night at Gibson’s Bar & Steakhouse.
The occasion?
The NBA Draft Lottery where the Detroit Pistons, for whom the former Seton Hall coach works as a scout, had a 14% chance at landing the No. 1 overall pick in generational French big man Victor Wembanyama, a 7-foot-5 version of Kevin Durant. “Gonzo’s” colleagues at dinner included Pistons vice chairman Arn Tellem and general manager Troy Weaver.
“I tried, I tried, I had on a superstitious dress shirt that I used to wear in some of my games that I coached, but it didn’t work,” Gonzalez, 59, said with his trademark mischievous smile Wednesday at Wintrust Arena, where he’s scouting the NBA Draft Combine with the Pistons staff.
The San Antonio Spurs won the Draft Lottery -- and the rights to Wembanyama -- while the Pistons will pick fifth in the June 22 NBA Draft.
The Pistons fell short of the ultimate prize, but Gonzalez appears to be enjoying his new life as a scout. He still goes to college games to scout the players, but he hasn’t coached a game since he was fired by Seton Hall in 2010 -- 13 years ago.
“I pretty much have to be an expert on the East Coast, but I do go all over the country,” Gonzalez said while wearing a credential that read “Robert Gonzalez.” “I do some NBA stuff, G League, but mainly college scouting for the Draft.”
He estimates that he attended 60-70 college games this season. “And I probably wrote 150-200 reports,” he said. “We do video studies, it runs the gamut.” This year one of the players he scouted was Princeton star Tosan Evbuomwan, the 6-8 forward who impressed NBA scouts here Wednesday with 10 points and smart play in his game.
Last year, Gonzalez scouted former Purdue star Jaden Ivey and gave his input to management before the Pistons ultimately selected Ivey with the No. 5 pick.
“Jaden Ivey’s pretty good, so that turned out well,” he said with a laugh. “I was watching him all year, I was a big advocate of his.”
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Gonzalez got the Pistons job because of his relationship with Weaver, who co-founded and coached with the famed DC Assault program that fed Dunbar (Md.) point guard Kenny Minor, Carmelo Anthony’s best friend, and Dave Holmes to Gonzalez’s Manhattan teams that reached back-to-back NCAA Tournaments in 2003-4.
“Troy delivered those guys for me when he was the DC Assault guy, so I go back with Troy 30 years,” Gonzalez said.
Weaver was also influential in Anthony landing at Syracuse.
Syracuse beat Manhattan in the first round of the 2003 NCAA Tournament in a game in which Anthony had 17 points and 9 rebounds. He went on to lead the Orange to their only NCAA championship under Jim Boeheim, who retired this year.
Gonzalez has been with the Pistons for 2 1/2 years and says he doesn’t really miss coaching.
“I do love it, I love working for Detroit, I love the NBA,” he said. “Every once in a while, you miss the finite thing of keeping score, the competitive thing of coaching, actually winning a game or losing.”
But he’s grown accustomed to his more quiet lifestyle, away from the pressure-cooker of Big East games, dealing with the media and recruiting. He lives in Harrison, N.Y. with his wife Tracy and their daughter Brooke, a sophomore in high school. In April, he was inducted in the Greater Binghamton Hall of Fame in his hometown, and says next year he’ll be inducted into the New York State Hall of Fame. He’s still waiting for the call to the Manhattan College Hall of Fame.
“We love the lifestyle because I’m able to live in New York and scout and fly to Detroit five or six times a year, so I get to be around my family,” he said. “In some ways it’s better than coaching even though you travel a lot.”
He looks back on his Seton Hall days -- he went 66-59 in four years with no NCAA appearances -- and points out that it was before the Big East split apart and the football schools -- Syracuse, UConn, Louisville and others -- sought greener pastures through football money and Power-5 conferences.
“Once [Rick] Pitino and [Jim] Calhoun and [Jim] Boeheim and all those guys left the league, it became a different job,” he said of the 2013 split that saw the Catholic 7 leave the football schools. “When I was in it, a 16-team conference, it was the haves and the have nots, and then it became sort of like everyone was a have.
“Not you’re playing at Butler, at Xavier, not easy, but not like going to Louisville or Pittsburgh with Jamie Dixon or Syracuse at the Dome.”
Of course, Jay Wright and Villanova dominated the new league, winning two national championships on top of all their Big East regular-season and tournament titles.
“Once those Hall of Fame coaches left, all of a sudden Jay was like the dean of the league,” Gonzalez said. “But good for him, he ended up getting in the [Naismith] Hall of Fame, he deserves it, he earned it, won two national titles.”
Of his Seton Hall says, he says with a smile, “It was a great experience for me and I feel like there were good people there and hopefully I did a decent job. We had three straight winning seasons and I left them a couple 1,000-point scorers with Jeremy Hazell, Jordan Theodore, Fuquan Edwin, those were all my guys.”
Gonzalez is a big supporter of current Seton Hall coach Shaheen Holloway. After Holloway ended his playing career in Europe, Gonzalez told him, “Shaheen, you need to get into coaching, you’re going to be a star.” He gave Holloway his first job as a graduate assistant/video coordinator with the Pirates.
“They didn’t pay him a lot unfortunately but after two years that’s why he went with Kevin Willard [to Iona],” he said. “They doubled his salary.”
Now he roots hard for him.
“I want him to win, I want him to do great,” he said. “I love him, I think he’s a great fit there.
“I’ve heard that they have some NIL struggles so I hope the people there know that they need to give him a fair [chance],” he added. “I know it’s not easy with Rick Pitino coming in and Ed Cooley [at Georgetown] and all these new guys, but for Shaheen to have a chance, they gotta back him and help him.
“Nowadays, it’s like free agency between the transfer portal and the NIL. It’s kind of like free agency in the NBA.”
Gonzalez knows a thing or two about transfers, having brought in Herb Pope and Jeff Robinson to Seton Hall and Luis Flores to Manhattan.
“I was actually ahead of the curve and I got a lot of heat for it in those days,” he said with a laugh. “Now, it’s normal, it’s natural, so I think I could’ve handled it.”
