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FILE – Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone stands on the sideline during the second half of an NBA basketball game April 1, 2025, in Denver.<\/p>\n
David Zalubowski\/AP<\/p>\n
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) \u2014 Michael Malone acknowledged that he\u2019s an outsider as North Carolina\u2019s basketball coach.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI did not play here. I\u2019m not from Carolina,\u201d he said Tuesday evening during his introductory news conference at the Dean Smith Center. \u201cBut I think they\u2019re ready to embrace somebody new. A new vision to try to get this program back to where we all want it to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The Tar Heels hired the NBA championship-winning coach Tuesday, signing him to a six-year deal worth $50 million in base compensation.<\/p>\n
Malone replaces Hubert Davis, who was fired on March 24 after five seasons as the successor to retired Hall of Famer Roy Williams.<\/p>\n
The 54-year-old Malone spent 12 seasons as a head coach in the NBA, including a 10-year run in Denver. He led the Nuggets to the 2023 title behind three-time league MVP Nikola Jokic.<\/p>\n
The Nuggets fired Malone last spring with less than a week left in that regular season. Almost a year later, Malone took over a blue-blood program with six national titles, a record 21 appearances in the Final Four and alums including Michael Jordan, James Worthy Vince Carter and Atlantic Coast Conference career scoring leader Tyler Hansbrough.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Malone said 10 to 12 former UNC players visited him in his arena office in the few hours after he arrived earlier Tuesday from Colorado.<\/p>\n \u201cI think family is important,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something we talked a lot about in Denver. I think it\u2019s even more important in the college landscape because you\u2019re talking about young men coming to your program.\u201d<\/p>\n Malone said he rebuffed overtures from UNC \u2014 and then regretted it \u2014 early in the search process. Executive associate athletic director Steve Newmark, who\u2019ll become the AD this summer, visited Malone\u2019s Colorado home Sunday and persuaded him to accept the position.<\/p>\n \u201cCoach Malone was the first coach we called and the first coach we talked to,\u201d Newmark said. \u201cAnd we ended in the right place.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Malone said he realized that a coaching job like North Carolina becomes available only so often. Davis\u2019 firing opened one of the top jobs in college basketball for only the fourth time since the late Hall of Famer Dean Smith\u2019s retirement after 36 seasons in October 1997.<\/p>\n The job had stayed in the \u201cCarolina Family\u201d ever since. Longtime assistant Bill Guthridge replaced Smith, followed by former UNC player Matt Doherty, former Smith assistant Williams and then Davis, who played under Smith and worked on Williams\u2019 staff.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a chance to be a part of something special \u2014 the history, the tradition,\u201d Malone said.<\/p>\n UNC also broke with tradition in December 2024 when it brought in a championship-winning pro coach to lead its football program, hiring Bill Belichick, who went 4-8 in his first season.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Malone\u2019s six-year deal starts at $7.5 million in base compensation and rises to $9 million by the 2031-32 season. Malone can also earn incentives worth up to nearly $1.5 annually, while he has a buyout that starts at $8 million through April 1 and drops to $6.5 million in 2028 and $5 million in 2029 as it continues to decline over the life of the deal.<\/p>\n Additionally, the agreement requires a $4 million salary pool for assistant coaches and support staff, as well as for the school to commit no less than $6.75 million of its revenue-share allotment to men\u2019s basketball.<\/p>\n Malone has never been a college head coach and has spent most of his career in the NBA. His primary connection to UNC athletics is the presence of daughter Bridget on the Tar Heels\u2019 volleyball team. He said he attended multiple basketball practices \u2014 with Davis even asking him to speak to the team at least once \u2014 during his visits to Chapel Hill during the past season.<\/p>\n After 24 seasons in the NBA, he\u2019ll face some challenges. One that he mentioned: adapting to games played with halves instead of quarters.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Soon to be part of the Tobacco Road rivalries, he\u2019s determined to lead the Tar Heels back to the top.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to add to that rivalry (with Duke),\u201d Malone said. \u201cI want to win. I didn\u2019t come here to be second best. I didn\u2019t come here to lose in the first round of the ACC Tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n AP Basketball Writer Aaron Beard in Indianapolis contributed to this report.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and <\/a>https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILE – Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone stands on the sideline during the second half of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[7,6309,88230,301,187,3943,14168,1194,935,6138,6,253,1773,302,29499,29496,29494,29497,87342,29498,62660,88229,16039,88228,2685],"class_list":{"0":"post-704396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bill-belichick","10":"tag-bill-guthridge","11":"tag-denver","12":"tag-denver-nuggets","13":"tag-denvernuggets","14":"tag-hubert-davis","15":"tag-james-worthy","16":"tag-michael-jordan","17":"tag-mike-malone","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-nikola-jokic","20":"tag-north-carolina","21":"tag-nuggets","22":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","23":"tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","24":"tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","25":"tag-product-32001-ap-online-basketball-news","26":"tag-product-32555-ap-online-college-sports-news","27":"tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","28":"tag-product-40804-ap-north-carolina-sports-only","29":"tag-steve-newmark","30":"tag-tyler-hansbrough","31":"tag-unc-michael-malone","32":"tag-vince-carter"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704396","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=704396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>
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