How did a kid from the Seattle area become an IU basketball manager in the 1990s?
It was one part a love for the game, another part a father’s love for discipline, and throw in an important connection.
But the journey that led new IU basketball executive director Ryan Carr to the Hoosier State started with disappointment.
“I was a kid that got cut from my high school team but loved basketball,” Carr told Don Fischer on the Inside Indiana Basketball radio show. “My high school coach let me stick around and help them. He knew how much I loved the game. I wanted to coach or be around the game, and he allowed me to keep doing that even though I got cut. It was a bit of humble pie to be around those guys who I wanted to play with.”
Carr knew his best chance to stay in basketball in college was to become a manager. So he started a letter writing campaign.
His father had a recommendation.
“When I was looking to go to colleges I wrote a bunch of letters, there was no e-mail back then. Actually Indiana wasn’t on my list,” Carr told Fischer. “My dad was a Marine. He loved Coach Knight and thought I should write one to Indiana. Of all those 30 letters I sent out I only got one response, and that was from Coach Knight.”
A relationship on the basketball team he had been cut from sealed the deal. It was one of Carr’s first lessons on the value of relationships, something he went on to build a career around.
“One of those kids on the basketball team at my high school, his grandfather owned Baden Basketballs and he had a business partnership with Coach Knight,” Carr said. “He talked to his grandpa, his grandpa had a meeting with Coach Knight, and Coach Knight said that I could do it.”
Carr spent 1992 to 1996 as a manager under Knight at Indiana. He’s one of many former Knight managers who went on to successful careers in the sport, including Michigan head coach Dusty May, and Clippers President Lawrence Frank.
DARIAN DEVRIES ON CARR
Carr brings over two decades of NBA front office experience with the Indiana Pacers, rising from a regional scout to Senior Vice President of Player Personnel.
His role with the Hoosiers will focus on roster building. He will report directly to head coach Darian DeVries and will assist him with other areas of the program, as well.
DeVries made his first public comments about Carr Monday evening. He discussed the importance of Carr’s connections and ability to evaluate and project talent.
“I’m really excited about it,” DeVries said. “First of all, Ryan has an incredible reputation out there, not only for his basketball talents and skills in that regard, but just an awesome person and a great addition for us to add to what we’re trying to do. The way the game has evolved with the portal and NIL, he’s gonna be a huge addition for us.
“He’s got incredible experience, NBA experience. For us, recruiting and the connections he has across all of the NBA teams, to have that direct line to every organization, to be able to almost promote our guys from within and be able to have the insight –– because he’s one of those guys that’s just so well respected and trusted in the profession, that when he tells somebody that we have that they should take a look at and really value, they’re going to take his word for it.
“We’ll evolve [his role] as well. It’s a newer position in the profession, so it’s something that we definitely wanted to add,” DeVries said. “I think just initially right now when you’re thinking about the biggest impact that he’ll have is just from an evaluation standpoint in the portal.
“He has such a really good eye for how to build a roster, for evaluating talent and understanding the analytics of talent and what it looks like and projecting out. So when you have someone that has the expertise that he does, that’s gonna be huge for us as the portal has become such a vital part of recruiting, especially for us in the spring here.”
For complete coverage of IU basketball, GO HERE.
The Daily Hoosier –“Where Indiana fans assemble when they’re not at Assembly”
- You can follow us on X: @daily_hoosier and find us on Facebook and Instagram
- Seven ways to support completely free IU coverage at no cost to you.
