SALT LAKE CITY — One of the longest tenured members of the Utah Jazz front office is leaving for a job with the New York Knicks.
Jazz vice president of player personnel Walt Perrin will become the Knicks’ new assistant general manager, a team source confirmed Monday. The Athletic’s Shams Charania was first to report the news.
In his 19th season with the Jazz when the 2019-20 campaign was suspended, Perrin has long been a key figure in the team’s scouting efforts, He would attend NCAA games and practices, international competitions, and even high school events almost year-round.
That excluded May and June, when he was responsible for getting prospects to Utah for annual predraft workouts, and he became the team’s point of contact for the media after each workout and in the days leading up to the draft.
The Knicks have been busy overhauling their front office, with Perrin being the most recent piece added to the new equation. In February, Steve Perry replaced Steve Mills as general manager and in March, Leon Rose, a former agent, was hired as Knicks team president.
With the NBA postponing the draft lottery and draft combine, and the draft likely to follow suit, as well as the league restricting access that teams have to draft prospects, Perrin was leading the Jazz in using new and different strategies to gather information on prospective players.
“The health performance group provides physical assessments and our scouting consultants, led by Walt Perrin, have been doing a bunch of very interesting projects,” Dennis Lindsey, Jazz executive vice president of basketball operations, said in early May.
Perrin has long been respected throughout the league for being one of the most well connected figures when it comes to NBA prospects and scouting.
A native of Chicago, Perrin started his NBA career as a scout for the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1993 and spent time with the Detroit Pistons in the scouting and coaching departments before joining the Jazz.
Perrin was former Jazz general manager Kevin O’Connor’s first hire in 2001, coming on as the director of scouting and had been the Jazz vice president of player personnel since 2008.
The Knicks’ hiring of Perrin has not been made official but the move is expected to be announced by New York next week.