May 16, 2024 – Charlotte Hornets Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations Jeff Peterson announced today the team has hired Dotun Akinwale as Assistant General Manager, Ryan Gisriel as Vice President of Basketball Operations & Strategy and Patrick Harrel as Vice President of Basketball Insights & Analysis.
Akinwale, who has 11 seasons of NBA experience, joins the Hornets after spending the previous nine years with the Atlanta Hawks. He most recently served as the Hawks’ Vice President of Player Personnel. During his time with Atlanta, Akinwale also served as Manager of Scouting, Director of Scouting and Senior Director of Player Personnel. Akinwale began his NBA career with the Orlando Magic as a basketball operations intern in 2013, and he was promoted to Basketball Operations Coordinator for the 2014-15 season before joining the Hawks. Akinwale played basketball at Thiel College and graduated with a degree in business administration.
Gisriel worked for the Brooklyn Nets for 11 years prior to joining the Hornets. He was promoted to Executive Director of Basketball & Business Operations before the start of the 2023-24 NBA season after having served the previous six years as the team’s Director of Basketball Operations. His other roles with Brooklyn included Director of Basketball Administration and Assistant to the General Manager. Prior to his time with the Nets, Gisriel worked at Shapiro Negotiations Institute, assisting chairman Ron Shapiro. Gisriel graduated from the University of Notre Dame, where he earned a degree in political science and was a member of the men’s squash team.
Harrel joins Charlotte following eight years with the NBA, most recently as the league’s Senior Director of Basketball Strategy & Analytics. In this role, he led the NBA’s schedule optimization efforts to reduce the travel burden on players, and he played a key role in designing and implementing the NBA Bubble in 2020, in addition to the play-in and in-season tournaments. Harrel also served as an NBA representative on the league’s Competition Committee and managed the league’s research into on-court rules changes. Harrel graduated cum laude with an economics degree from Princeton University and began his career as a strategy & analytics intern with the Houston Astros in 2015. He was named to the Forbes Sports 30 Under 30 earlier this year.