{"id":604525,"date":"2026-06-22T16:03:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T16:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/604525\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T16:03:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T16:03:14","slug":"michigans-dusty-may-to-become-next-head-coach-of-the-dallas-mavericks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/604525\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan’s Dusty May to become next head coach of the Dallas Mavericks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Michigan head coach Dusty May<\/a> has agreed to become the next coach in Dallas, a person with knowledge of the move confirmed to The Dallas Morning News<\/a>, bringing an end to a monthlong search just in time for the NBA draft this week.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks are expected to officially announce May\u2019s hiring Monday, making the Portland Trail Blazers the only NBA team\u00a0with a coaching vacancy.<\/p>\n

May, who won a national championship at Michigan this year, will become Dallas\u2019 11th coach in franchise history and will inherit a team with a promising young centerpiece in Cooper Flagg and a savvy veteran in Kyrie Irving, a duo new president of basketball operations\u00a0Masai Ujiri has said he wants to see on the court next season.<\/p>\n

May, 49, follows Ujiri\u2019s track record of hiring coaches without previous NBA head coaching experience, but it\u2019s the first time he\u2019s hired a candidate from the college ranks. Both Nick Nurse and\u00a0Darko Rajajovic were prominent NBA assistants before\u00a0Ujiri hired them for the Toronto Raptors\u2019 last two coaching vacancies.<\/p>\n

May arrives with a bevy of experience as an NCAA head coach. He spent six years as coach of Florida Atlantic from 2018-24 and led the program to the Final Four in 2023. He started his college coaching career as an assistant with Eastern Michigan (2005-06), followed by stints at Murray State (2006-07),\u00a0UAB (2007-09), Louisiana Tech (2009-15) and Florida (2015-18).<\/p>\n

May\u2019s leap to the NBA may come as a surprise because he agreed to a contract extension at Michigan after leading the Wolverines to their first national title since 1989 in his second season as coach. Michigan is projected to have three players drafted in the first round Tuesday: Morez Johnson Jr.,\u00a0Yaxel Lendeborg and\u00a0Aday Mara.<\/p>\n

By hiring May on Monday, the Mavericks have positioned him to be involved in several key decisions to be made over the next few weeks, starting with the draft.\u00a0Dallas has two first-round picks Tuesday,\u00a0Nos. 9 and 30, and No. 48 in the second round Wednesday.\u00a0The front office could explore trade options in either direction.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks had been looking for a new head coach since parting ways with Jason Kidd<\/a> following the end of a 2025-26 season that began with postseason expectations but ended with a 26-56 record. The Mavericks have missed the playoffs for two straight seasons after making it to the\u00a0NBA Finals in 2024.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks conducted a comprehensive search over the last month, reportedly considering prominent league assistants and NCAA candidates, including Flagg\u2019s college coach at Duke, Jon Scheyer.<\/p>\n

Dallas also reportedly interviewed Houston assistant coach Royal Ivey, Toronto assistant Jama Mahlalela, Minnesota assistant Micah Nori, Boston assistant Tony Dobbins, Brooklyn assistant Steve Hetzel, Miami consultant Noah LaRoche\u00a0and three-time former NBA head coach Terry Stotts, who served as a Mavericks assistant for four seasons.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the front office landed on May, who\u2019ll have a chance to replicate his college championship pedigree in the big leagues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Michigan head coach Dusty May has agreed to become the next coach in Dallas, a person with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5117],"tags":[2155,196,147,5278,5,4,197,65101,64592,65102],"class_list":["post-604525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas-stars","tag-brief","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-stars","tag-dallasstars","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-stars","tag-tp-cooper-flagg","tag-tp-jason-kidd","tag-tp-kyrie-irving"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116794609083740925","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}