UNC Got the Right Basketball Coach
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Michael Malone was formally introduced as the next men's head basketball coach at UNC. Let’s discuss.
I don't know what it is about UNC and hiring former professional head coaches with proven track records, but they've done it again. This feels different though than when they hired Bill Belichek last season. The Belichek hire was totally out of left field, so is this Malone hire. But Belichek was out of the coaching profession for a year or so. And he is old. He is one of the older coaches in all of college football. He also has a partner that seems controlling. I don't know if she is, but she seems to have a hold on him and kind of does all of his scheduling and other things. I understand that he probably needs this, he is so old as I said, but it still feels off. And the Belichek hiring has not paid off to this point. UNC had a bad season on the football field, there seemed to be a ton of problems on and off the field and he's already had turnover on the roster and coaching staff. The UNC football program seems like a program in trouble.
When the men's basketball team fired Hubert Davis, and with Caleb Wilson going pro, it seemed like the men's basketball program was going to go through a similar fall off. They let the head coach go after an okay season. Their best player missed the most important stretch of the season and then went pro. And they have had a few dudes already enter the transfer portal, and this was when they had no head coach. So, when the news came out that they were hiring Michael Malone, I was stunned.
About a week ago I wrote about who I thought they were going to go after in the hiring process, naming Tommy Lloyd and Dusty May as the most likely candidates. Well, both of those dudes said no thank you and, apparently, UNC already had their sights set on Malone. Michael Malone has been at the very top of the basketball world. He was the head coach of the Nuggets when they won the title in 2022. He seemed to be set for life as the main guy there, but the team and front office decided to move on late last season. From what I have read some of the people on the team and on the staff did not like his hard core, yelling approach to coaching. Michael Malone is a gruff, no nonsense old school head basketball coach. He demands the best out of his players and he wants them to give their all every single second they are playing or practicing the game of basketball. I can see how this would wear on modern NBA players. Those dudes make a ton of money, they have been the star at most stops and they pretty much know the ins and outs of the game. They do need a figurehead, someone to take the blame and heap praise upon. But that guy needs to be able to adapt to the lifestyles of their professional athletes. That does not work very well for the Michael Malone's of the world. And that is precisely why I think this might actually work for UNC.
UNC went out of their way to get Malone. They hired a guy that has zero ties to UNC. He didn't play there, he never coached there and I bet the only time he has spent in the Carolinas is when he was a head coach in the NBA and his team had a game in Charlotte. But the dude knows basketball and he has proven that he can win a ton of games. He did it at the highest level for a good long time. But what makes this make sense, college players don't make the money that the pros do. They are getting paid right now, but Michael Malone is going to get paid much, much more than them. He can also show off his NBA championship ring anytime he pleases. He can talk about coaching guys like Nikola Jokic, Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray. He knows what it takes to get to the pros. He can help usher these highly rated recruits and transfers into the pros. He can show them exactly what they have to work on to get to the highest level. He knows the game. And I don't think recruiting is as awful as some say. You do have to travel all the time, you have to sell the program, you have to deal with NIL and the transfer portal, but Michael Malone has dealt with most of this stuff in the pros. He has been through the ringer and come out on the other side.
This is a home run hire in my opinion. UNC reached for the stars and grabbed a pretty damn big one. I think this is going to work out really well and really quickly and I think UNC may have just made the hire of the offseason for men's college basketball. This is a big deal.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing, the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast, and the greatest basketball writer on the internet.