BLOOMINGTON — Ryan Carr did not dampen the excitement behind his words, as he talked Tuesday for the first time about his decision to return to his alma mater.
Nor did he mask the passion — his word — with which he plans to address and embrace his new role as executive director of Indiana basketball, a GM-type role Carr will begin immediately.
But those weren’t the motivations that brought Carr, a one-time Bob Knight manager who’s spent the best part of the last quarter-century with the Pacers, from the NBA to college. The future, not the past, returned him to Indiana.
And it’s because of that Indiana fans should embrace the potential Carr’s arrival to Darian DeVries’ brain trust now hands DeVries’ project in Bloomington.
“This was a decision I didn’t really see coming,” Carr said during a brief, enthusiastic Q&A session Tuesday. “I wasn’t going to make a decision on nostalgia. I was going to make a decision on the future, and whether I thought I could help.”
Indiana will lean now on Carr’s extensive expertise in basketball, particularly in areas including roster building, and player evaluation and development.
Since his first days on the job in Bloomington, DeVries has considered the possibility of hiring a general manager or something like it, acknowledging the myriad complications associated with modern roster management in college basketball.
Few would come as credentialed as Carr.
A Bob Knight manager in his days as an IU student, Carr worked for the Pacers after college before briefly dipping into coaching. He eventually returned to Indiana, where across the last 23 years he worked his way up the ladder of responsibility. His stops include director of scouting, vice president of player personnel and, most recently, senior vice president of player personnel.
Carr said it would’ve been hard, before DeVries approached him about this role, to imagine even leaving the Pacers. In that way, the pull of his alma mater proved pivotal.
“I wouldn’t have done it for any other school,” he said. “This, for me, is a passion project. There’s not another title to chase. There’s no promotion to chase. There’s no different job to chase.
“This is where I want to be. This is for the place that helped me to get here.”
No one could question Carr’s commitment to reestablishing Indiana among college basketball’s most successful programs. It’s just not nostalgia — again, his word — that brought him back to Bloomington.
Instead, it was a belief in DeVries’ approach to basketball, informed by relationships across the two institutions and a series of conversations between Carr and DeVries, that sold the former on the potential behind his new job.
It helped that multiple members of the Pacers’ front office, including general manager Chad Buchanan, shared DeVries’ Iowa roots, knew the Hoosiers’ first-year coach and vouched for him. Carr met DeVries when DeVries and his family attended a Pacers playoff game last season, and Carr admitted to texting IU’s coach after most games “just as a fan of this place.”
Carr’s connection with DeVries, though, intensified over the last two weeks. After DeVries approached Carr about the role, they engaged in a series of discussions both specifically about the job, and about the philosophies informing their respective approaches to the sport.
One of those conversations, roughly 10 days ago, that Carr characterized as long and in depth really left him seriously considering the job.
“I went away from that going, ‘I can see myself there,’” Carr said. “‘I can see myself working with him.’”
Carr credited Indiana’s appeal in other areas, citing the Hoosiers’ recent football success as evidence of strong top-down leadership in the university athletic department more widely. But it was in talking with DeVries, “to get to know each other, talk basketball over these past 10 days, share a lot of ideas on team building,” that Carr said he found “a lot of alignment” between the two.
All of which prompted news Monday that Carr would return to his alma mater in the first proper GM-type role IU men’s basketball has ever had.
Carr acknowledged the differences he will have to navigate between college and the pros, including the lack of a more clearly defined salary structure and cap, still-evolving player valuation markets and more.
He also said he, like DeVries, wants to see Indiana’s roster balanced between high school and college players. Likening transfer recruiting to overpaying in free agency, Carr said the Hoosiers must break their recent dependence on the portal.
“The last two years, this program has had to rely way too much on the portal,” he said. “We will work hard to get the roster balanced.”
That work starts essentially right away. Carr’s last day with the Pacers is Friday, the timing allowing him to dig into roster work as soon as possible.
It will mean long hours, lots of video and extensive player evaluation. All the same things Carr would be doing for the Pacers, just under different circumstances.
What it won’t require is reminiscence on Carr’s fond memories of Indiana, or genuflection to the idea of what the Hoosiers were. Yes, those ties that bind him to this place helped bring him back. But not nearly so much as his ambition over what Indiana can become, and the myriad ways in which he can help transform that potential into reality.
There is no greater endorsement of his arrival.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Former Pacers executive heads home to ‘passion project’ with Indiana basketball
Reporting by Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
