Another North Carolina coaching search took an unexpected turn away from the college ranks and into the big leagues. And just like the first, it ended with a championship coach leading one of the Tar Heels’ signature programs.
Sixteen months after UNC stunned the sports world by hiring six-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick to lead its football team, the school sprung another surprise Monday by tapping former Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone to lead the crown jewel of Chapel Hill: North Carolina men’s basketball.
North Carolina really needs this big swing to connect.
UNC has yet to announce the move, which was confirmed by multiple people briefed on the search who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. North Carolina pivoted quickly to hire Malone after its top two targets — Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd and Michigan’s Dusty May — took themselves off the board. If North Carolina was going to go the NBA route, then Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan, with two NCAA championships from his time at Florida, seemed the likely choice. However, Malone had actually been on UNC’s radar from the start and quickly moved to the forefront following Saturday’s Final Four games, according to multiple industry sources.
The 54-year-old brings 25 years of NBA experience, little time working at the highest levels of college basketball and a championship ring he won as head coach of the Denver Nuggets with Nikola Jokic in 2023.
In some ways, the move echoes UNC bringing in Belichick to professionalize and modernize a perpetually so-so football program in December 2024. So far, that has not worked. Belichick’s first team went 4-8.
Malone is inheriting one of the bluest blue bloods in college basketball, a program with six NCAA championship banners. And there are multiple reasons — from the process, to the support system, to the incoming coach himself — to suggest this should be different.
Still: For a proud program that claims Michael Jordan and the most March Madness wins ever, landing on an out-of-coaching coach who was run out of his last job days before the NBA playoffs was not what anybody expected when North Carolina fired former Tar Heels star Hubert Davis two weeks ago.
The Tar Heels seem to have all kinds of tricks up their sleeve these days. But the basketball search did not come with the same levels of boardroom drama that led to the 73-year-old Belichick replacing Mack Brown.
UNC hiring Belichick was the result of the school running two de facto searches simultaneously: one by athletic director Bubba Cunningham and another by board members who subverted the university’s traditional hiring process. The basketball search, on the other hand, followed a more typical trajectory, with Cunningham and his soon-to-be successor Steve Newmark — a former NASCAR executive with no experience hiring college coaches — working alongside a search firm and an advisory committee of donors and former players.
Lloyd, a former Gonzaga assistant under Mark Few, was the clear top choice for UNC. Former Tar Heels coach Roy Williams — who won three national titles and still holds plenty of power in Chapel Hill — is close with Few and was an enthusiastic supporter of Lloyd. Maybe if Lloyd had not taken Arizona to the Final Four things would have turned out differently, but Lloyd ended the speculation last Friday by announcing he was staying, with a hearty contract extension and a raise.
May seemed to be more of a long shot, and industry sources confirmed the Michigan coach never seriously considered the Tar Heels’ courtship, instead rolling to a national championship Monday night with the Wolverines.
With the transfer portal about to open on Tuesday and Donovan still noncommittal, North Carolina decided not to wait and targeted and hired Malone — with Williams’ blessing — in the span of about 48 hours. Multiple people briefed on the search told The Athletic that Malone had been on UNC’s list from early on and had been approached about the job before Lloyd pulled out of consideration.
As a bonus for North Carolina, because Malone has been working for ESPN since he was fired by Denver last April, the school does not have to pay a multimillion-dollar buyout it likely would have cost to lure another college coach.
As a bonus for Malone, his daughter, Bridget, is a sophomore volleyball player at North Carolina. That meant Malone was around the program last season, attending multiple practices and even speaking to the team at Hubert Davis’ request. So while, yes, Malone is a departure from the Carolina family — the first head coach without direct ties to the Tar Heels since 1952 when Frank McGuire took over, then was succeeded by the legendary Dean Smith — he is at least already a UNC fan.
Malone played at Loyola (Md.), and his time coaching in college basketball was brief and a long way from being the man in charge at a program such as UNC, with stints as an assistant at Oakland (Mich.), Providence and Manhattan College. But college basketball isn’t what it used to be.
The days of coaches spending a large percentage of their time recruiting teenagers out of high school are waning. With players now being paid through name, image and likeness deals and revenue-sharing agreements with their schools, player acquisition is more transactional than ever.
“Today, it’s easy. You can recruit a guy for a week and get him. You know what I mean? ‘Hey, what’s your number?’” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes explained recently.
May agreed.
“We used to recruit guys for three years and spend 80, 200 man hours away from our families, begging these 15- to 18-year-olds to come play at our university,” he said at the Final Four.
North Carolina’s transition to a more professional model started last year, when it hired former NBA agent Jim Tanner to be the basketball program’s general manager for about $1 million per year. Malone’s hiring makes it more likely that Tanner is retained, according to multiple sources, plus the fact that he has a nearly $4 million buyout.
Major college programs such as BYU (Kevin Young), Florida State (Luke Loucks) and Butler (Ronald Nored) all dipped into the NBA assistant pool in the past couple of years to find their next coach.
Once Lloyd and May made it known they weren’t coming to Chapel Hill, North Carolina decision-makers began prioritizing one thing over everything else, according to multiple sources briefed on the search: unimpeachable coaching acumen, even if it came with a lack of experience in the college game.
And while Malone may not know college basketball, his NBA ties should still bear fruit in his new role — especially his connections to agents, including Misko Raznatovic, who represents Jokic and many of the top international prospects attempting to come to college. That tie could help UNC tap the pipeline of prospects from overseas eager to cash in on NIL and revenue-sharing riches.
Nuggets coach David Adelman, who replaced Malone, said his old boss could be perfect for the Carolina job.
“You have to look at it like, these guys are under contract now,” Adelman said. “A lot of NBA coaches understand what it means to coach somebody that’s making money. And there is a level you can’t go to, like it’s 1950, but there’s definitely a level somewhere in the middle. And I think that’s what’s appropriate nowadays for the college game.”
Malone is the son of a coach. Brendan Malone worked his way through the college ranks before spending three decades in the NBA as an assistant and head coach.
Michael Malone, who was born in New York City, broke into the NBA with the Knicks as an assistant in 2001 and got his first head coaching job with Sacramento in 2013. He didn’t even make it a season and a half, but he got a second chance with the Nuggets in 2015 and hit the jackpot.
Malone’s 10 seasons in Denver coincided with the unexpected rise of Jokic from second-round draft pick to NBA superstar. The Nuggets became a consistent contender in the Western Conference under Malone and won it all in 2023, but less than two full seasons later he was fired.
While some players had grown weary of Malone’s intensity and volatility, it was his fractured relationship with then-general manager Calvin Booth that was the driving force behind that decision. The two men were sideways for most of their final season together, with disagreements ranging from roster decisions to rotations. With just three games left in the 2024-25 regular season, Nuggets ownership decided to fire them both.
Malone landed at ESPN, where he has remained since.
His name was already starting to surface around NBA coaching searches this cycle, but the chance to land one of the best college jobs turned out to be more appealing.
In many ways, it’s fair to wonder if Malone’s style might be even more effective at the college level. He is widely respected as a coach and a strong leader but was sometimes stymied by the politics that come with the professional level. Whether it was during his time with Golden State (where he was a lead assistant under Mark Jackson), Sacramento (where he was fired midway through his second season) or Denver, there were power struggles that were born out of his desire to have more control and support.
That might not be an issue in college, where the coach — especially a successful one — still typically wields the most power in the program.
And especially so at North Carolina, which just gave a different former professional coach a blank check and carte blanche.
Malone has a long track record of truly connecting with elite players, from LeBron James (whom he coached as an assistant for five seasons during his first Cleveland chapter) to Jokic, Jamal Murray, Steph Curry, DeMarcus Cousins and many more. As it pertains to UNC, he also coached program alum Danny Green, who vouched for Malone on social media on Monday after news broke of his hiring.
Malone’s relationship with Jokic, in particular, spoke volumes about his ability to reach his best players as people. He once organized a covert offseason trip to Jokic’s hometown in Serbia, along with a small and secret Nuggets group, to deliver his second MVP trophy in 2022.
Malone’s direct style and legendary intensity, while grating at times for players and staff, has typically yielded results.
That’s not unheard of among this generation’s most successful college coaches: UConn’s Dan Hurley, Florida’s Todd Golden, Houston’s Kelvin Sampson and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo.
Malone is a defense-first coach at heart, with his philosophies shaped by his father’s time as an assistant on the “Bad Boys” Detroit Pistons teams. (He was there under Chuck Daly from 1988 to 1995, a span that included two titles and three Finals appearances). But Malone also showed an ability to build an efficient offense with his Jokic-led Nuggets.
It all sounded good enough to North Carolina to make a bold choice. The program has been in a relative funk the past seven seasons, starting with the final two of Williams’ tenure. Except for one pop-up Final Four run in 2022 under Davis, the Tar Heels have fallen behind rival Duke, which seamlessly went from Mike Krzyzewski to Jon Scheyer.
To catch up, North Carolina basketball is trying something different — and banking on Malone’s transition to go smoother than Belichick’s.
— Sam Amick contributed to this report.
