Why Would Michael Malone Forgo the NBA for College?

All right, let's talk about Michael Malone, the new head coach at the University of North Carolina.

This was a shocker, an absolute shocker, because Michael Malone, from everything I was hearing, was going to be a candidate in this year's coaching cycle, um.

I don't know what's gonna happen in Orlando.

Uh, we'll see what happens in the postseason with Jamal Mosley.

Uh, it sure sounds like Milwaukee's heading for a rebuild.

Doc Rivers, could he wind up on the outs?

I think those were two spots that would have been interested in Michael Malone.

Instead, he pivots and goes to North Carolina to become a college coach for the first time in his career.

Uh, and North Carolina, on the heels of the tremendous success of Bill Belichick as head coach, hires a head coach for their program with no college coaching experience.

What was your reaction to Malone to UNC?

I mean, I was as surprised as everyone else.

Certainly, he's a guy who was considered a top candidate for coaching jobs in the NBA this offseason.

It's not like he had to take this job.

He left Denver because.

Because of a clash with the front office in Denver, not because he was a bad coach, but that's a very different thing.

He did not leave Denver tarnished in some way where he was irredeemable.

So he definitely, in my opinion, could have had an NBA job starting, you know, the summer if he had wanted it.

I learned in looking into this that his daughter goes to UNC.

She plays volleyball there.

So while that is not a reason to take one job for the other, but, but it's not, I mean, it just makes it slightly less random like.

Why UNC?

Like he could have had other colleges could also sit out and work for ESPN and collect 7 figures, doing nothing and go to her games all the time.

I mean, apparently he really does not like being in the media.

Like that will tell you how much he does not like having a media job, um, but I, you know, that's the only attachment.

Like if I was looking for an attachment, I was like, why is he doing this?

Why would this happen?

Um, and he does like going to our games apparently shows up all the time, but, uh, I don't know how much time you're gonna have to do that if you're a college coach there.

Look, I I, I can't explain it on either side.

I really can't.

Can you?

No, like Michael Malone is a very, very good basketball coach, very good.

Um, you're right.

His ousting in Denver, um, had as much to do with a personality clash, and I think ownership at that time thought the team was plateauing.

Remember, they weren't playing all that well going into the playoffs.

Let's not pretend he's damaged goods in some terrible way.

He won a title what, how, how many years, won a champion.

Won a championship, by the way, when Sacramento fired him, that has roundly been looked back on as a bad decision.

So I, it's again, Michael Malone absolutely could have gotten a job in the NBA this summer and not even a bad one necessarily.

By the way, we fire a third of the league every summer, so it probably could have gotten a great job.

I don't get it though, because why would you want to put yourself through that.

Like college basketball is a mess.

It is a jigsaw puzzle.

And college basketball, you could be the greatest coach of all time.

You might not win a game in the NCAA tournament.

College basketball, when it comes to coaching, It's not about how much you know.

It's not about the X's and O's.

Who is the greatest college coach that's out there right now?

Like you look at the legendary names, Rick Pitino, John Calipari, these big names that have been out there over the years.

None of these guys I would consider great basketball coaches.

I think they're great in other areas.

They're great recruiters.

They're great, uh, at getting through to young people in a locker room, making young guys want to run through a wall for you, and that is more than half the battle.

But the skill set.

That Michael Malone has proven to have.

I don't know how applicable that is to college basketball, and he's got to go in there and compete in a kind of free for all that had people like Jay Wright running for the door at the very end.

Like why, why would you want to put yourself in that situation?

Yes, you work, you are now working for a legacy institution, a Blue Blood, one of the great programs of all time.

But that doesn't guarantee anything.

You've got to treat every year like it's an NBA offseason and recruit your own guys to stay at your school.

OK, I would argue a few things .

First of all, there are great college basketball coaches pretending that there's no good college basketball coaches out there.

The strengths.

It's like coaching is not their strengths.

I disagree.

I mean, come on, but, you don't think Dan Hurley is a good coach.

I think Dan Hurley is a good coach, but I think he's better.

There are other things he's better at, right?

I think on the list, on the list of things that make a great college basketball coach great, I think.

Coaching the game is kind of at the bottom of that list.

I think there are more elements recruiting, development, etc.

However, I would argue that there's no great college basketball coaches.

I would actually say that NIL has helped clean up coaching.

I, I mentioned this earlier in the show.

I think it is a lot easier to be a college coach at a big program in the age of NIL.

That is not true for smaller programs, but for a big program, basically your boosters run recruiting for you now.

and the president and deciding like where that money goes, the athletic director rather like the idea now it's like how much money do you have?

Who do you want to spend it on?

There you go.

You are not basically writing love letters to 15 year olds hoping, hoping, please will you pick me like the bachelor.

It's just here's the amount of money we have, please come.

Um, so I think all of that explains why college coaching is not as bad a job as you seem to think it is.

However, I would still say the NBA is a better job and, and a more high yield job and a job that has greater security and a job that will get you to more of the ultimate destination and that yes there is big money and big programs for college coaching.

I don't know if the money has come out of how much they're paying Malone, but there's also, I bet they're paying him a pile you can make decent money coaching in the NBA as well these days.

Well, that's, well, but OK, now you're making the point the other way.

What that oh you think less stress less stress in the NBA for sure, for sure.

This is why, and I, I have been, we'll see, I, I agree with you.

It is a head scratcher.

I'm just gonna pick the bone with you that coaching in college is, you know, a disaster.

Is there currently a former great college coach coaching in the NBA?

Like, I'm looking up and down the list like.

Like, who was the last great college coach to come to the NBA?

Like Brad Stevens?

I mean, the better question is who's the last great NBA coach to have great success in college, and was it under these rules?

No, nobody in their right mind, if you have success in the NBA, nobody in their right mind goes back to college.

Nobody does it.

PJ Carlesimo, when he got fired in Brooklyn, is it the daughter playing volleyball?

What?

I'm asking you, is it the daughter playing volleyball?

Is that the answer?

I have no idea.

I'd love to have the conversation with him, but I'd love to know if he thought this thing through or look, maybe, look.

A lot of things happened behind the scenes.

Maybe his coaching agents were taking the temperature of some of the teams that might have openings, and they said, well, you're not our first choice.

Maybe that happened.

Uh, there's no other reason than to put yourself into this washer machine in college basketball.

I don't even think that reason is good enough though, because most NBA programs don't get their first choice of coaches.

Most NBA programs that fire their coaches are extremely reckless.

About it.

New York Knicks, we're gonna fire Tom Thibodeaux because we think we can get Jason Kidd.

You were never getting Jason Kidd.

You didn't get Jason Kidd.

And then you go with, who turned, by the way, I really like Mike Brown, but he certainly wasn't their first or second choice.

Like, I think if you're Michael Malone, you could be pretty sure that you could have a job in the NBA if you wanted it, or sit out one more season and wait until the better job came open if there wasn't a good enough one this season, because just wait a year or two, there's always a great one that's available.

I, I just, I'm very confused.

I'm looking forward to his press conference.

We're taping this on Monday, um, you know, afternoon, and he hasn't spoken yet.

We don't know how much money it was yet, but it is, it was a real head scratcher to me.

And as soon, as soon, I will tell you the Michael Malone news broke before the Bulls news.

And as soon as the Michael Malone news broke, I was like, oh, they're gonna fire the front office in Chicago.

It was literally the first sentence that came to my head, and it was way before the Bulls news broke, but it was the obvious connection to make.

I'm still stuck on these, I mean, college coaches.

Respect for what they do, but like when I'm looking for, you don't, you don't need to trash.

I'm not trash.

I'm just, I'm saying their talents are the, the more important talents for these coaches are recruiting, our development, are getting through to young people.

I think Xs and O's.

I, I don't often see college coaches.

I mean, I guess it happened.

Like you draw up good plays, but like it's more like how they develop it's a wider ranging job.

You have to be good at more things.

I don't think that means there are no good college coaches.

No, there are good college coaches.

I'm just saying they're not, that's not the skill set that is most important is my, my greater point.

Do you, but the question is like, does Michael Malone have those other skills?

Like, is he good at player development?

I go, look, he developed Jokic, Jamal Murray, I guess that's a.

Sign that he can do that.

Can he get into the recruiting machines?

He's gonna have to hire some great assistants down there that know how to do all that stuff.

This is one of the crazier hires.

This is almost as crazy as Bill Belichick.

Well, this is what, what's interesting too is Michael Malone, one of his strengths in the NBA, I thought was in an era where coaches were increasingly having to coddle NBA players.

He managed to walk the line of delivering it like it is.

Missoula is obviously a great example of this as well.

I am going to coach you hard both behind.

doors and frankly at the podium, and I'm going to say hard truths about my team and Malone maybe even stepped a little too far over that line toward the end.

I mean, he was kind of insulting his players' effort right and left for a while, and there was some conversation of did the locker room get tired of this.

But whether they did or not, it took a very long time of him being able to do that, and he did that extremely well in the year they won the championship.

He did that extremely well, called out his own players when they needed to, even though other coaches across the NBA were.

Finding they couldn't do that at all because all of a sudden then it would create a rift with the player and then the coach would be the one out the door.

I don't know if that style works in college when you've got a bunch of 18-year-old kids who have been told their entire last 5 years that they're the greatest thing since sliced bread and could transfer at any moment.

You have to re-recruit them every year if they don't leave already to go to the NBA draft.

So I, I wonder if that style is going to play literally, I, I.

I think of another coach who had the option of going back to the NBA who chose college.

Even like Bill Belichick wanted to be an NFL coach, went to UNC because that NFL opportunity was not there.

I think Michael Malone had a shot at one of the open jobs that are coming this summer, and he is choosing to go back to college.

I think that's crazy.

I think it's going to be a stressful, stressful thing.

Even if he gets to go watch his kid participate in.

College sports once a week.

I still think it's gonna be incredibly stressful.

I also think it's a crazy move for the UNC athletic department.

I mean, they struck out everybody.

Look how many guys they struck out on like, but, but just who has just gone through this with Belichick to have been the team, not just to have Belichick out as the example there, but to be the school that went through the Belichick experience over the last year and to do this again is absolutely like it's incredible and kudos to Billy Donovan for knowing how to apparently play winning hand.

Looked like it.