When North Carolina hired Jim Tanner as the team’s general manager in February, the Tar Heels had three games remaining on their 2024-25 regular season schedule.
The move to bring him on was an attempt on UNC’s part to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of college basketball, as Tanner’s addition also came two months before the opening of this year’s transfer portal window. North Carolina entered the offseason knowing a slew of changes to its roster could be on the way. That has played out through the portal, with five departures and five additions to date.
Elliot Cadeau, Ian Jackson, Jalen Washington, Ven-Allen Lubin and Cade Tyson all entered the transfer portal since the season wrapped up. So far, Hubert Davis and the Tar Heels have added Henri Veesaar (Arizona), Jonathan Powell (West Virginia), Kyan Evans (Colorado State), Jarin Stevenson (Alabama) and Jaydon Young (Virginia Tech) to rebuild their roster.
UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham acknowledged on the school’s Carolina Insider podcast with Jones Angell and Adam Lucas this week the ranging results that UNC Basketball has seen with its finishes in the last few seasons. He believes the task of the general manager to improve the roster construction efforts will help the program reach and stay at its standard moving forward.
“I think what our history has been at Carolina, we have really been good at identifying young high school talent, developing that talent and having a program that’s been consistent for a long period of time,” Cunningham said on the in-house interview released by the school. “The coaching staff is consistent, the style of play is consistent. Quite frankly, the body type of the players have been fairly consistent over time. And I think that’s what has been our tradition.
“But that’s not today’s environment anymore. Now, we have the transfer portal, we have NIL, we have one-and-dones and we have the draft. So I think the general manager will allow us to take a look at the college landscape. Who’s playing right now? Who will fit our system as we go forward? What does it take to attract talent? How do you pay the NIL? How do we interact with this new revenue share that starts July 1?
“So I think we’ll get consistency. I think we’ve been inconsistent in our success in the portal. I think we’ve had some great success, we’ve had a couple of misses. Not to say we haven’t had misses over time in high school, but I think we have to continue to do what we’re doing at the high school level (and) assess the college landscape better so we’re more consistent in the portal. I think we have to do a better job at retention of kids on our own team. And I think if we can do that, we’ll have more consistency than we’ve had in the past. And I think our GM will allow staff members to focus on things other than scouting, coaching and recruiting throughout the year.”
Tanner has represented former UNC players Marvin Williams, John Henson, Sean May, Tyler Hansbrough, Justin Jackson, Raymond Felton, Joel Berry and others. He founded Tandem, a full-service agency, in 2013. He graduated from North Carolina in 1990 and earned the prestigious Morehead-Cain scholarship.
Cunningham praised Tanner’s “outstanding” background in this week’s interview and said Tanner is the right fit for North Carolina as the program explores this evolved state of college sports.
“He knows Carolina as a student,” Cunningham said. “He hasn’t been an employee here, but he’s been connected to the place. And I think he understands the values of this place, understands our program. Has worked with basketball players all across the country. I don’t think there’s a better fit for us for the GM for our basketball program.”
Along with its portal transactions, North Carolina lost RJ Davis, Jae’Lyn Withers and Ty Claude due to expired eligibility, and Drake Powell declared for the NBA Draft on Wednesday. The team will bring back Seth Trimble and James Brown while adding freshmen Caleb Wilson, Derek Dixon and Isaiah Denis.
UNC extended Davis with a five-year deal in December. He has reached the NCAA Tournament in three of his first four seasons with the team as a No. 1 Seed, a No. 8 seed and a No. 11 seed. Davis is 101-45 at North Carolina.
