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(I almost didn't post this. My first thought was: wow, that's really inside bas(k)e(t)ball, if you know what I mean. But then I realized: Wait! "Inside bas(k)e(t)ball" is what I do for a living!)

As some of you know very well, some of you may be vaguely aware, and many of you do not know at all, I made a New Year's resolution on January 1, 2006 to figure out what it is that NBA Insider William Wesley does. In his very first ESPN column, Scoop Jackson had called Wesley the most powerful man in sports. Others had investigated Wesley and dug up bits and pieces. I then assembled a towering heap of evidential scraps about the man.

I've gotten pretty picky about what Wesley information I'll pass along these days. -- figuring at this point we don't really need more information, we need real insight. We need stories that take the information we have to the next level. I'm holding out for first-hand anecdotes with attribution, provable facts, and clarity.

There's something like that here today.  First, the back story, from "My Summer with William Wesley," the first thing Gregory Dole (he of the "Rolling With Leandro" series) ever wrote for TrueHoop:

At the dinner table out of nowhere Wes asked where Leandro was training. Leandro told him with Eric Lichter. Wes goes stone faced. He was pissed.

He was talking a lot about don't train with that mother... He said Sagana, you tell him. And Sagana told us. Sagana kept saying that Wes and Sagana were like family, and people didn't understand that Sagana would never do anything to hurt Wes.

Apparently the story was that Eric spoke badly of Wes. So Wes, it seemed like he had a vengeful side. He said something like I'm cool with everybody, but talk crap about me, I'll f--- you up. I didn't get the impression he meant like, violence. Just cut you off, kind of thing.

The reason Leandro was training with Lichter was because he had heard that Lichter was training LeBron James. That made him the trainer of note, in a way. But it was pretty coincidental. A couple of days later, Eric told us that LeBron was not training with him anymore, and it was apparently related to what he heard that night in the restaurant. Wes was really, really angry.

An interesting point is that I don't think Wes knew LeBron all that well at that point. Eric and LeBron were two-waying, with those little Motorola pagers everyone had then, quite a bit. Eric showed me the messages. But LeBron James certainly stopped going to that gym.

And then one day Tim Grover [top trainer who trained Michael Jordan] just showed up at Eric's gym, in head-to-toe Wizards gear, uninvited. He was just checking out the facility. It startled Eric.

I always though it would be interesting to talk to Eric Lichter about William Wesley. Lo and behold, yesterday, about four years after the events described above, Lichter got in touch with me yesterday. Lichter's now the director of "football performance" for Ohio State's football program.  

In recent weeks, after running across talk of Wesley on TrueHoop more than once, Lichter was inspired to get in touch with Wesley to thank him. Wesley, he said, was curious, as you could imagine.  Lichter explained that he had been young and short-sighted, but the way the whole thing had shaken out had been good for everyone in the long run. Lichter and Wesley are now reconciled, and Lichter says Wesley welcomed him into his inner circle, and that he would like the trainer to call him "Uncle Wes."

Lichter explains, in an email (that, I should point out, Lichter says was not instigated by Wesley) how it all happened:

After being directed to your blog which provided some of Greg Doles insight into the relationship between William Wesley and myself, I started to feel the need to scratch an itch I had had for quite some time.

Uncle Wes (as I now call him), was very upset with a comment I made about him during LeBron's senior year in high school while LBJ was under my tutelage.

I had told DeSagana Diops brother Code that Wes was not good for LeBron.

Because of that comment, as well as my youth, inexperience and lack of understanding of who Wes was, the doors of opportunity were certain to be closed shortly thereafter. Of course, it didn't take long for the news to get back to Wes and he taught me what I consider now to be a very valuable lesson!

I was angry with Wes from the first time I met him. It was during a dinner at the Blue Point Grille in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Wes was having dinner with Eddie Jackson [LeBron's stepfather], Ron Harper, DeSagana Diop, Leon Rose and Code Diop.

I can't recall why I was there but Eddie and DeSagana invited me over to sit down and eat with them. I had spent five weeks that summer training Diop on John Lucass recommendation and had been training LeBron for quite some time. Leandro had not arrived yet.

Wes was raving about the weight DeSagana lost under Tim Grover's training program and how Tim was the best trainer on the planet and so on. Inside I was burning up because Diop had dropped close to 15 lbs in five weeks under my training and had noticeably increased his explosiveness and lateral movement and here was Tim Grover getting all the credit in front of Eddie Jackson, LeBron's surrogate father.

I was pissed!

I must mention that Wes had treated me very well at that dinner and picked up my tab that night. Missed opportunity! Naturally, knowing that there was such a movement going on all around me to get Grover and LeBron together in the future always had me on edge. I was young, insecure, defensive and ready to tell anybody and everybody about my talents and what I had accomplished to this point without the resources of guys like Grover.

I didn't really know Grover at the time either, just knew of him and what I had researched about him. But as you can imagine, I spent much energy trying to convince the world that I was much better than him and he was who he was because he had Michael Jordan.

Again, my youth and inexperience was coming to the forefront. I know Tim very well now and think he is a great guy and deserves all the credit he gets and more!

To wrap this up, after having spent several years after the Wes incident reflecting upon my life, successes (and there have been many), failures (and there have been many) good choices, bad choices, etc. William Wesley taught me a hard but great lesson about judging people and looking for opportunity for growth and relationship building rather than relationship breaking! I thank him a ton for that.

I have since reached out to Uncle Wes to share this with him and he was very happy to know that I had grown from the experience. You may in fact see us sitting at a game together one day! In closing, I have met more people in the sports world than you can count that know him or know of him and they all love him! Why? I would say it's because he always has their best interests in mind is definitely good for them!