VanDeWeghe moved back to the U.S. as a child and eventually wound up playing college basketball for the UCLA Bruins, where he earned all-conference honors in the Pac-10 (now known as the Pac-12).
In 2013, he announced he was changing the spelling of his name to "VanDeWeghe", in honor of his recently departed paternal grandfather and namesake.
The team was coming off a season in which they lost three starters, David Greenwood, Roy Hamilton, and Brad Holland to the NBA as first-round draft picks.
Replacing this talent were some mainly unknown freshman, namely "Rocket" Rod Foster, Michael Holton, and Darren Daye, along with sophomore Mike Sanders.
The Bruins, dubbed "Kiki and the Kids", were the 48th and final team selected to participate in the 1979–80 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament.
The first, on December 13, 1983, in which he had a career-high 51 points, is also the highest combined scoring game in NBA history, a 186–184 triple-overtime loss to the Detroit Pistons.
[4] In the summer of 1984, VanDeWeghe was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers in exchange for Calvin Natt, Wayne Cooper, Fat Lever, and two draft picks.
He had several productive seasons in Portland, where he averaged nearly 25 points a game paired with Clyde Drexler to form a dynamic scoring duo.
In the 1986 NBA Playoffs, VanDeWeghe averaged a postseason career high 28 points a game in a first round loss to his former team, the Nuggets.
[5][6] On March 5, 1987, VanDeWeghe scored 48 points, his highest single game total as a Trail Blazer, in a 127–122 loss to the Seattle SuperSonics.
Major moves by VanDeWeghe included the drafting of Carmelo Anthony in 2003, the trade for Marcus Camby in 2002 and the hiring of George Karl as head coach in 2005.