Indiana Hires Executive Director of Basketball from Pacers in GM-Esque Role

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Indiana men’s basketball has taken a significant step toward embracing new-age roster construction in the NIL era.

The Hoosiers have hired Ryan Carr as Executive Director of Basketball, IU Athletics announced Monday in a press release. Carr is the first general manager equivalent Indiana has added since the enactment of NIL in the summer of 2021.

“His role with the Hoosiers will focus on roster building,” the release says. “He will report directly to (Indiana basketball coach Darian) DeVries and will assist with other areas of the program, as well.”

An Indiana basketball student manager under Bob Knight from 1992-96 and graduated from IU in 1996, Carr has worked for the Indiana Pacers over the last 23 years. The Sumner, Washington, native is leaving his perch as the Pacers’ Senior Vice President of Player Personnel to return to Bloomington.

Carr’s journey with the Pacers started as a video intern in the 1997-98 season, and he earned a promotion to video coordinator the following season. Indiana made the Eastern Conference Finals both years.

Then, Carr spent a brief period back in college basketball, as he was an assistant coach at UTEP from 1999-2003. He returned to the Pacers as a scout in 2003-08 before ascending to the assistant director of scouting in 2008-09 and director of scouting from 2009-18.

Carr ascended to higher realms of the Pacers' front office thereafter. He was Indiana's director of player personnel from 2018-19, vice president of player personnel from 2019-24 and, most recently, senior vice president of player personnel over the past two seasons.

During Carr's time with the Pacers, they won three division titles, reached the playoffs 14 times, made five Eastern Conference Finals and played in the NBA Finals last season.

NBA Draft analyst Jonathan Givony, previously with ESPN, called Carr's hiring a "major hire" for Indiana.

"Ryan Carr is a longtime, highly respected NBA executive," Givony said on social media, "who ran the Pacers’ pre-draft process for years and has been a constant presence on the scouting circuit."

The addition of Carr gives the Hoosiers their first true front office-like piece, and he figures to play an integral role in the coming weeks, when DeVries and his staff face another roster retool.

Indiana will lost six scholarship players to graduation — guards Lamar Wilkerson, Conor Enright and Tayton Conerway; forwards Reed Bailey, Sam Alexis and Tucker DeVries — and may lose a few other players to the transfer portal.

The Hoosiers likely won't need an entirely new 13-man roster as they did in Darian DeVries' first offseason, but they're in line for a makeover — and Carr will be at the center of it.