Jake Fischer announced Friday night that Illinois men’s basketball has hired a general manager. The NBA reporter revealed that his sources say Neel Ganta is returning to Illinois after multiple seasons with the Denver Nuggets. Ganta also updated his LinkedIn with his new position, confirming the reports.
Ganta was a graduate assistant for Illinois in 2020-21, its best regular season in recent memory. Illinois finished the regular season 20-6 before winning the Big Ten tournament. Ganta was heavily involved with player development and analytics during his tenure in Champaign and has furthered his experience in professional basketball.
He spent the 2021-22 season as the player development coordinator for the Grand Rapids Gold, the NBA G League affiliate of the Nuggets, before spending multiple years in various front-office roles for Denver, most recently as a professional scout.
The NCAA landscape is constantly evolving, and NIL has ramped up the financial part of college athletics. Several Hall of Fame coaches like Nick Saban, Tony Bennett and Jim Larrañaga have cited the new landscape as the reason behind their recent retirements.
With everything coming all at once, coaches have had to add financial management on top of the already difficult recruitment and development aspects of their positions. A general manager with professional player development experience will make head coach Brad Underwood’s job less stressful and add another productive mind to an already successful program.
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