Back in the early '90s, Jim Clibanoff didn't really have a blueprint to get into basketball. He wasn't angling to get into the sport. He'd graduated from Tufts, and Cheltenham High before that, and was starting law school at Temple that fall of '91.
Yet here he was Wednesday night at Temple, across the street from the law school at the Liacouras Center, over 25 years later, trading familiar greetings with NBA scouts along press row.
"How was Europe?" another scout asked Clibanoff.
Maybe Clibanoff's path to being director of scouting for the Denver Nuggets - while still living in Lower Gwynedd, Montgomery County - began with a cold call to a minor league basketball outfit that was going to play that summer of '91 at Holy Family University.