Tim Fuller presented Dennis Gates with a 100-day plan.
Missouri basketball is among the recent wave of college athletic teams to embrace a new trend across the sport, hiring Fuller — a former MU assistant — to be the the team’s first general manager. His return to Columbia was officially announced June 2.
For now, it’s an evolving and extremely flexible position. Every program that hires a general manager will define that role somewhat differently.
Fuller appears to be embracing the type of role you’d see from a GM in a professional organization’s front office, bringing experience that ranges from working at Nike for now-Dallas Mavericks GM Nico Harrison, to helping found Overtime Elite, a league for some of the nation’s top high school basketball players.
So, when he came on board to work with head coach Dennis Gates and Mizzou, he came with an idea for what the role entailed.
“Initially coming in the door, I have been learning from Coach Gates and the staff, and just evaluating where the areas (are) that they would need me to plug in the gaps,” Fuller said Saturday, June 14, as he met with local media for the first time since his return to Columbia.
“I gave Coach a 100-day plan, and the first 10% of that 100 days was to get to know the players and to understand them, and for them to have a chance to get to know me. The second kind of phase, I would say 30% of that plan, was to get to know the agents that the staff already knew, and to introduce them to agents that I might have relationships with.
“So, we have several buckets that we’re putting these relationships in. One is an agent bucket, one is an elite player high school bucket, and then there’s an international bucket, so that we can all collaborate on the different approaches that we’re going to have.”
That’s what the landscape now requires.
College athletics is entering a new era. Beginning July 1, universities will be allowed to distribute approximately $20.5 million of revenue directly to their student-athletes. Missouri athletic director Laird Veatch said June 12 that the bulk of that money at MU will go to football and men’s basketball.
That is why Fuller is here.
Roster retention, high school recruiting and transfer portal business now — more than perhaps ever — includes a financial component. That means more agents, more contracts and, of course, more money.
Fuller will do more for MU in the background, including schedule management and other front-office work, but roster management is the clear No. 1 priority.
That starts with Mizzou’s current roster, with whom he has met with and seemingly discussed ways to market their own brand in the new era.
“I think that initially, Coach has me on certain tasks to understand the landscape, first and foremost, of where we’re heading,” Fuller said. … “We obviously just introduced revenue-sharing. There’s some transitions from collectives. And the opportunities that our players have to be in a position of understanding their own name, image and likeness and owning their brand.
“So, really wearing different hats is what we discussed.”
Fuller said he first came into contact with Gates while the MU head coach was an assistant on Leonard Hamilton’s staff at Florida State. That likely overlapped with Fuller’s time in Columbia.
In the 10 years since Fuller was an assistant for Frank Haith and, briefly, Kim Anderson, he kept in contact with Gates while he worked in different executive roles and in his return to college basketball at Providence, where former Missouri standout Kim English is the head coach.
Once driven by trying to earn a shot at being a head coach, Fuller said he’s instead taken the time to learn the ins and outs of college basketball, from the AAU level to the NBA and all the interconnecting pieces of that ecosystem.
That seemingly makes him qualified to take on what being a general manager will require.
Over the coming months, Fuller said he’ll be meeting agents while MU’s coaches attend FIBA events. He said he plans to introduce and set up meetings for Gates with agents in his network while the pair attend the NBA Summer League in July in Las Vegas.
“I’m at this point here to serve,” Fuller said. “And I want to help others reach their full potential, and eliminate some of the burden that Coach Gates may have in terms of some of the outside relationships, the handshaking, the agent relationships — just making sure that Mizzou basketball is covered 360 degrees.”
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