The sense of urgency demonstrated by Levien over the last seven days, and ensuing results, have been remarkable, to say the least -- especially for a guy who'd been Greene's initial agent, and re-hired again.

The 6'4" guard made the transition from Boston to Indiana when the Pacers picked him up off waivers.

The former Gainesville (Fla.) High and University of Louisiana-Lafeyette star had played 80 games as a Celtic, after landing with the team in a draft pick nearly single-handedly brokered by Levian.

Despite being a No. 53 pick in the 2005 NBA Draft.

Despite coming into the league with a broken foot.

When I first contacted him, I remembered him as a high school player from Florida who left the University of Florida for Louisiana-Lafayette," recalled Levien. "And his senior year he averaged more than 10 points a game. So there were question marks about him. So I contacted him, he was sitting on a couch with a friend of his from Orlando. There was recruiting to represent him at all. He hadn't been invited to Portsmouth and he wasn't going to be invited to Chicago.

"We had him work with David Thorpe, get himself in shape, get him focused. He went in to work out for the Celtics and the Celtics promised they'd take him in the second round. They made good on that promise to take him. Immediately after the draft, we were celebrating. He went out to Boston to practice and they found out his foot had still been fractured, and he needed pretty significant surgery that was going to keep him out for 16 weeks. Boston had enough faith in him, that even though he couldn't play in summer league after that, they gave him a guaranteed contract for the first year. And it was a multi-year contract, with the first year guaranteed."

BACK TO NEWS