Coach Thad Matta contacted Tony Bollier in April about a new position on the Butler basketball team. It was right after the Final Four and the end of Bollier’s season as a G League assistant coach.
Butler was adding a general manager role, and after seven years in the Milwaukee Bucks organization, Bollier fit the bill.
“We had a great connection when we started talking and it felt like we were on the same page,” Bollier told IndyStar about how he and Matta connected for the work.
Bollier is now the general manager of Butler men’s basketball and director of player development, the university announced last week.
The role of general manager is new to college basketball. Duke’s men’s program was the first to add one in 2022. Now, several programs of all sizes have added one to their staff.
College athletics is changing rapidly and college coaches have to juggle more things than ever before. With the in-and-out nature of the transfer portal and the influence of the NIL, college sports are becoming even more professional. A general manager like Bollier can help coaches maneuver these new responsibilities that didn’t exist in the last few decades of the NCAA.
Bollier arrives in Indianapolis after seven years with the Bucks. The Leo, Indiana native joined Milwaukee as director of basketball operations in 2017. He won the 2021 NBA championship as a member of the front office. Bollier worked as general manager of the G League Wisconsin Herd for two years before becoming an assistant with the Herd for the 2023-24 season. Now in college, Bollier said he feels what he did in the NBA will be an advantage.
“I think it would be a great opportunity to take what I did in the NBA and apply a lot of that to how we are working and operating in this new environment.”
It’s been a decade since Bollier worked in college basketball. After graduating from Wheaton College in Illinois, Bollier was director of basketball operations from the 2011-12 season before returning as an assistant coach at Wheaton from 2012-14. That was Bollier’s last college job, as he became manager of player personnel and coach relations for the NBA G League (then the D-League).
Bollier is still learning what is needed from him in this role. Before you begin diagram the plans for the program and how he should approach the position.
“I want to learn as much as I can before I formulate really strong opinions, thoughts or views,” Bollier said. “So, right now, it’s a lot of learning, a lot of listening. And I think what I’m learning early on is just in terms of the way you’re building – in many ways – a new team every year, year after year. Not completely, but I think sometimes, and some teams almost completely change.
This turnaround in the lineup is something Bollier is used to. NBA teams evolve year after year with free agency, trades and the draft. But G League teams change even more quickly. Bollier dealt with rosters that had 20 to 30 players during his seasons with the Herd.
With the Bulldogs, Bollier wants to create a roster with pieces that complement each other well. He is now part of Matta’s team tasked with getting Butler back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018.
“There are a lot of moving parts in putting together a list,” Bollier said. “And now there’s the money side of things where you almost have — for lack of a better term — free agency in college, year after year.”
Bollier will not travel to scout high school recruits and is not yet sure how much involvement he will have when those recruits visit the Butler campus. Much of what Bollier will do is still undecided. He will have input into transfer portal decisions, but he doesn’t know to what extent. If he is responsible for scouting players in the portal, reaching portal targets, etc. It’s something Bollier plans to address to prepare for next spring.
“That’s something we want to keep in mind and we have a plan leading up to that point, so we’re not just reacting,” Bollier said. “We (will) have an idea and a direction of how we want to go.”
Bollier’s improvised position will entail improvised responsibilities. General managers are not yet common in college basketball, so Butler and Bollier will learn as they go.
Bollier represents a new resource for Matta, 56, to utilize in his third season back at Butler. The program’s six-year NCAA Tournament drought is the longest it has endured since failing to survive for 35 years between its first and second appearances in 1962 and 1997, respectively. Butler would have participated in the canceled 2020 tournament, but even a four-year drought is the longest since 1997.
Having a general manager before he became popular in college basketball could give Butler an edge in returning to the field of 68.
“It’s just another resource for (Matta) to be able to do what he needs to do,” Bollier said. “…So if he has someone like me who he can trust to navigate the boundaries of what we’re doing with the NIL, and our All Good Dawgs collective and the transfer portal, then that just frees him up to have more time to stay with our guys, in planning, in what he wants to do with our team just in day-to-day training.
“It just gives him another resource that allows him to focus on what’s most important, and that’s our team, which is taking Butler basketball back to where it belongs, in his words.”
This article originally appeared in the Indianapolis Star: Why Butler Basketball Added Tony Bollier as New General Manager
