Michael Malone
The University of North Carolina surprised many last week when it hired Michael Malone to take over the basketball program. The hiring process took awhile and it was thought that was due to the school making a run at Dusty May of Michigan or Tommy Lloyd of Arizona, both participants in the Final Four.
Both May and Lloyd let it be known prior to the championship game that they would be staying at their respective schools. A few days later, the Malone hire took place.
Malone’s background is in the NBA and he is not from the ‘Carolina family.’ But he certainly comes from a basketball family.
Malone grew up in the game as his father, Brendon, honed his own NBA coaching career. Like his father, Michael Malone spent more than two decades in the NBA. He was an assistant with the New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, New Orleans Hornets and Golden State Warriors. His first head coaching job was with the Sacramento Kings, where he was fired in December 2014 after an 11-13 start to the season. By June 2015, Malone had a new job as head coach of the Denver Nuggets. After roughly a decade with the Nuggets, he compiled a 510–394 record as an NBA head coach, led Denver to the 2022–23 NBA championship.
Now, Malone is set to bring that championship pedigree and lifelong devotion to basketball to North Carolina, becoming the first UNC coach since Frank McGuire hired entirely from outside the program’s coaching tree.
Will it work? My first thought is that it will. Malone knows the game and college basketball, these days, is like the professional game when it comes to paying players and using the transfer portal to procure talent.
