North Carolina has hired former Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone as its next men\u2019s basketball coach, the school announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Malone, 54, had been on North Carolina\u2019s list of candidates for at least a week, but gained serious traction over the last 24 hours after top college options \u2014 namely Arizona\u2019s Tommy Lloyd and Michigan\u2019s Dusty May \u2014 removed themselves from consideration. Malone has never been a college head coach and last worked in college as an assistant at Manhattan in 2001, but he has 12 seasons of NBA head-coaching experience with the Sacramento Kings and Denver Nuggets, winning a championship with the latter in 2023.<\/p>\n
Malone will replace Hubert Davis, who UNC let go on March 24 after five inconsistent seasons, including a first-round NCAA Tournament exit this March.<\/p>\n
North Carolina also discussed its vacancy with Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan, multiple program and industry sources said, but felt it could not wait for Donovan from a timing perspective. Donovan wanted to coach out the rest of the NBA regular season, which runs through Sunday, five days after college basketball\u2019s transfer portal opens.<\/p>\n
That delay would\u2019ve put UNC at a significant disadvantage in building next year\u2019s roster, especially without a firm commitment from Donovan that he would take the job.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Tar Heels pivoted hard to Malone, who spent the last 10 months as an ESPN analyst after being fired by the Nuggets late in the 2024-25 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cMichael has proven he knows how to build strong, successful teams that can consistently compete in the postseason and win championships \u2014 and he knows how to make everyone on the floor better,\u201d UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham said Tuesday in a news release announcing Malone\u2019s hiring. \u201cHe understands how to build rosters and coach NBA players \u2013 which is exactly what our Tar Heels want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malone is well-respected for his X\u2019s and O\u2019s acumen, including how he accentuated the versatile talents of three-time MVP Nikola Jokic. Malone\u2019s basketball mind is one of the key reasons, according to program sources, that former UNC coach Roy Williams has blessed the hire. Malone also isn\u2019t a complete outsider in Chapel Hill after spending time around the program last season \u2014 especially when visiting his daughter, who plays volleyball at UNC.<\/p>\n
That said, for as well-respected as Malone is in basketball circles, his college experience is limited to short stints at Oakland, Providence, Virginia and Manhattan from 1994 to 2001.<\/p>\n
That makes his staff hires all the more important, as Malone will need to surround himself with people who both understand UNC and the larger college landscape: one increasingly dominated by the transfer portal, NIL and revenue sharing. Multiple program and industry sources expect Malone to retain at least one member of Davis\u2019 staff \u2014 likely Sean May, a key voice on Davis\u2019 staff who starred on the Tar Heels\u2019 2005 championship team. Former assistant coach Pat Sullivan, who coached for the New York Knicks prior to joining Davis\u2019 staff, is also a candidate to return.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know from the many Tar Heels in the NBA how special the Carolina Basketball Family is, and I will do everything I can to continue UNC\u2019s championship legacy while preparing our players for professional careers and life after basketball,\u201d Malone said via the news release.<\/p>\n
One advantage Malone has from a recruiting standpoint is his prior connection with prominent international agent Misko Raznatovic, who represents Jokic. Raznatovic \u2014 who has attended the last two Final Fours \u2014 represents many of the top international prospects attempting to come play college basketball, and a strong relationship with him is paramount to tapping into that talent base in future years. Raznatovic counted multiple members of Illinois\u2019 Final Four team amongst his clients.<\/p>\n
From a bigger-picture standpoint, Malone is the second major coaching hire North Carolina has made from the professional ranks in 17 months. The school hired six-time Super Bowl winner Bill Belichick in December 2024 as its football coach, which represented a major philosophical shift within the school\u2019s athletic department. UNC made record financial commitments to Belichick with the hopes he would bring the Tar Heels\u2019 football program into the modern era, believing his professional experience was well-suited for handling the transfer portal and player payroll negotiations.<\/p>\n
The process that yielded Belichick, though, was fractured from the start, with UNC operating two de facto searches simultaneously: One by athletic director Bubba Cunningham and another by the school\u2019s behind-the-scenes power brokers, including chancellor Lee Roberts and former school trustee John Preyer.<\/p>\n
Two sources familiar with this search said that North Carolina\u2019s process was much better, even though it resulted in hiring another longtime pro coach. Cunningham and incoming athletic director Steve Newmark \u2014 a former NASCAR executive who is set to succeed Cunningham this summer \u2014 worked together throughout the process, and consulted with an advisory group of stakeholders.<\/p>\n
Because of that collaborative effort, multiple sources expect UNC\u2019s boosters and donors \u2014 some of whom met Malone last season when he was around the program \u2014 to unite behind him from the jump and provide the necessary financial backing to compete. Malone\u2019s lack of a buyout\u00a0 \u2014 which UNC would have been required to pay to hire a sitting college head coach \u2014 was also an enticing factor.<\/p>\n
Diminishing financial support from UNC donors was one of the main reasons the program moved on from Davis, The Athletic\u00a0previously reported, but that is not expected to be the case for Malone.<\/p>\n
UNC\u2019s roster cost about $16 million in combined revenue-sharing and NIL payments last season, according to a source familiar with negotiations, meaning the Tar Heels\u2019 roster was believed to be one of the 10 most expensive in the entire sport.<\/p>\n
With the transfer portal opening Tuesday, that financial support will be immediately necessary if Malone hopes to hit the ground running to build a contender in his first season in Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Carolina has hired former Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone as its next men\u2019s basketball coach, the school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,187,354,6,231,772,1544,1770],"class_list":{"0":"post-703912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-denver-nuggets","11":"tag-mens-college-basketball","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-basketball","15":"tag-ncaab","16":"tag-north-carolina-tar-heels"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116365048115057962","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}