CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Even in Johnny Carpenter’s wildest hoop dreams, the former University of Virginia basketball student manager didn’t see himself coaching in the NBA.

“I look back at my time as a student manager at UVA, I said my dream job would be a non-recruiting role where I could coach and be on the floor with the players at UVA,” Carpenter told Cville Right Now. “Like a director of player development title or whatever at UVA. Not even an assistant coach. That’s where my brain was at.”

Where he’s at now is on the bench as an assistant coach with the Milwaukee Bucks. New Bucks coach Taylor Jenkins, who Carpenter worked for in Memphis, hired him after Carpenter was an Indiana Pacers assistant the past season. With Milwaukee, Carpenter will have an elevated role from his work with the Pacers.

Where he started? The Great Falls native became a student manager at UVA in the fall of 2009 – the same time Tony Bennett arrived in Charlottesville to take over the Cavaliers’ program. Carpenter worked for four years as a student manager, was a women’s basketball graduate assistant for a season, spent a year as an assistant video coordinator in the NBA with the Dallas Mavericks, then returned to UVA. He worked as Bennett’s Director of Player Personnel for five seasons. Bennett promoted Carpenter to an assistant job in 2023-24, a post he kept next year, working for Ron Sanchez after Bennett’s surprise retirement.

Following the 2024-25 season, Carpenter went to Memphis, working in a player development and scouting role. The next year, he joined the Pacers.

In Indianapolis, Carpenter learned under former UVA player Rick Carlisle. And there were other Cavalier connections. Jenny Boucek, a Carlisle assistant, played her college ball at Virginia. Center Jay Huff was a member of the Pacers, too.

Injuries, including losing star Tyrese Haliburton for the season, derailed the Pacers’ year. A year after reaching the NBA Finals, Indiana went 19-63, finishing last in the Eastern Conference’s Central Division.

Still, for the 35-year-old Carpenter, it was a tremendous learning experience.

“These are the years you really tend to value more, the years where there are a lot of losses,” Carpenter said. “That’s where you grow the most with opportunities to step up and be more vocal and have more input, create new ideas. Like, ‘How do we get out of this kind of funk?’”

When the regular season ended, Carpenter was selected to be an on-court coach at the NBA scouting combine. That gave Carpenter the opportunity to work with some of the top pro prospects ahead of the draft, and also get his own practice work in as a gameday coach.

“To be able to welcome them to the NBA and then to also be able to coach in front of so many people, friends within the league, people who don’t know you in the league, they’re out there watching, and it’s kind of a sink or swim moment,” Carpenter said. “So that was really fun for me to experience.”

In Chicago, Carpenter had the chance to coach a pair of games, seeing firsthand just how much is on an NBA head coach’s plate during a game.

“There’s so much going through the head coach’s brain and just like being able to filter all that,” Carpenter said. “The rules are a little different than college with timeouts and different things like that. So, I was getting used to that. It was just fun to see the strategy. It’s fun to problem solve. It’s just like live puzzles are happening in front of you and just being able to, not only solve that puzzle, but solve the next puzzle. And that was kind of the fun brain exercise.”

He was slated to coach Indiana’s Summer League team, but then he got the call from Jenkins to join the Bucks’ staff. Carpenter and his wife, Hope, have a 4-year-old and a 6-month-old, and – with this latest move unfolding – he labeled his wife the family’s “real MVP.”

While Carlisle and Jenkins have had huge impacts on his NBA coaching career, Carpenter will always hold Bennett in a special reverence. He said he still speaks with Bennett frequently, an example of how Bennett built the Virginia program “on relationships,” Carpenter said.

“Coach Bennett wasn’t just a boss to me. He was a life mentor, a dear friend,” Carpenter said. “I view him as family. He’s always there to guide. He’s always there to encourage.”

“I’ve had so many great mentors, so many great experiences,” said Carpenter, who added he’s building his coaching career “the old-fashioned way.”

“You work hard, keep chipping away, and stack day by day, month by month, then the years start adding up, and amazing things happen.”

For Carpenter, it’s the next step in a basketball journey that started with the most humble of roots.

“If you told College Johnny, Freshman Year Johnny, ‘Hey, 17 years from now, you’re going to be an assistant coach and head of player development for the Milwaukee Bucks, I think that version of Johnny would be like, ‘You’re lying to me.'”