Days after Dan Hurley announced he was turning down the Los Angeles Lakers head coaching job to stay at UConn, the Huskies coach shed more light on his decision during a recent appearance on the Dan LeBatard Show.
Amid speculation that Hurley only entertained the Lakers’ reported interest in him to secure a more lucrative contract at UConn, Hurley calmly stated that he “doesn’t need” the leverage.
“One of the worst takes I’ve heard is that this was a leverage play by me to improve my situation at UConn,” Hurley said on Thursday. “I don’t need leverage here. We’ve won back to back national championships at this place. This was never a leverage situation for me.”
“I’ve had a contract in place here for a couple of weeks, and the financial part in terms of salary has been done for a while,” Hurley continued. “But the idea that this was some conspiracy to get me a sweeter deal at UConn is lazy.”
Hurley added that it was “truly a gut-wrenching decision” to turn down the Lakers’ six-year, $70 million contract offer. He also insinuated that he might have left UConn had the Lakers offered more money.
“To say that it’s not a motivating factor—the finances—to leave a place, it’s definitely a thing,” Hurley said. “The family connection with my wife and my sons… To leave all that behind, there probably is a number. I don’t know what that is.”
The back-to-back NCAA champion signed a six-year, $32.1 million deal with UConn in 2023 and is expected to ink a new contract that will make him one of the highest-paid coaches in college basketball. Hurley’s new deal is “very close to the finishing line,” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont told reporters on Tuesday.
Heading into the upcoming season, the Huskies are seeking a third consecutive national title to become the first team to clinch the three-peat since UCLA won seven straight from 1967 to ‘73.
Stunning news in the basketball world was announced on Thursday morning and it had nothing to do with Game 1 of the NBA Finals which is set for tonight.
At 6:50 am et, Adrian Wojnarowski announced the Los Angeles Lakers are targeting UConn head coach, Dan Hurley, to become their team's next coach.
Hurley is fresh off leading the UConn Huskies to back-to-back National Championships, which hadn't been done in men's college basketball since Florida achieved the feat in 2006-2007. After their first championship in 2023, Hurley signed a six-year, $31.1 million contract with the school.
As a result of the news, the Huskies' odds to three-peat in 2025 have taken a dramatic hit.
Before the Woj Bomb dropped this morning, UConn was set as the co-favorite alongside the Kansas Jayhawks to win the 2025 National Championship at +1000. As of writing this article, they have fallen to fourth on the odds list at +1400 behind Kansas (+1000), Duke (+1200), and Arizona (+1200).
If you translate the odds to implied probability, their chance of a 2025 National Championship fell from 9.09% to 6.67%, a fall of 2.42% which is a significant drop in the futures market with the season still months away.
The signing has yet to be made official therefore there's still a chance Hurley returns to UConn. Wojnarowski followed up the original tweet with another one saying;
"The Lakers have had preliminary contact with Hurley and sides are planning to escalate discussions in coming days. Hurley’s been at the forefront of the Lakers’ search from the beginning of the process, even while the organization has done its due diligence interviewing other candidates."
If the signing is finalized and made official, don't be surprised if UConn's odds for a threepeat, something that hasn't been done since UCLA from 1967-1973, continue to drop.
Odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.
Monday brought news that Dan Hurley decided to turn down the Los Angeles Lakers and stay at UConn. Of the many aspects of the news, perhaps the most notable was that the Lakers were willing to pony up the big bucks to land their target.
In reporting Hurley is staying put, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski revealed L.A. was prepared to make Hurley one of the six highest-paid coaches in the NBA — to the tune of a six-year deal worth $70 million, good for more than $10 million annually.
Naturally, this begs the question of what coaches would have been making more than Hurley, as well as who would've been making less. NBA head coaching salaries are not the tightly-guarded secrets that NFL head coaching salaries generally are, but teams are rarely willing to plainly spell out how much they are paying their head coaches.
That does not stop the information from getting out, though. There are sourced reports on the contract value and annual salary of the top coaches in the league.
With that in mind, who are the highest-paid coaches in the NBA?
Below is a table listing the five highest-paid NBA head coaches, per NBC.
NAME
TEAM
SALARY
RECORD
Steve Kerr
Golden State Warriors
$17.5 million
519-274
Gregg Popovich
San Antonio Spurs
$16 million
1,388-821
Erik Spoelstra
Miami Heat
$15 million
750-527
Tyronn Lue
Los Angeles Clippers
$14 million
312-217
Monty Williams
Detroit Pistons
$13 million
381-404
Based on these numbers, Hurley would have slotted in behind Williams.
You may be asking why there are only five coaches listed. That's because, until recently, NBA head coach salaries were not interesting enough topics for insiders to report on. Combined with how stingy teams tend to be with this sort of information and reporters like Wojnarowski end up only reporting on the biggest numbers such as above.
That is not always the case. Mike Brown's negotiations with the Sacramento Kings, for example, were heavily covered and the news spread quickly once he reached a deal that would pay him $8.5 million annually. But for the most part there is little solid reporting on how much coaches around the league make.
The next question, then, is why do the coaches mentioned above warrant investigative reporting and high salaries?
Steve Kerr
Kerr signed a two-year extension worth $35 million with the Golden State Warriors in February, making him the highest-paid coach in the NBA. It is not hard to understand why. Kerr took over the Dubs in 2014 and immediately found success, winning four NBA titles in 10 years at the helm. Kerr is one of the winningest head coaches in the modern era and certainly one of the most respected.
The players play the game, but every great player needs a good head coach to put them in position to succeed. Kerr did that to such an extent that he created a modern dynasty behind Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. Which essentially earned him the right to ask for whatever he wants in contract negotiations.
Gregg Popovich
Coach Pop needs little introduction, but we'll go full speed ahead anyway. Popovich is one of the best head coaches in NBA history from just about every angle. He's coached the San Antonio Spurs since 1994 and won more than 1,000 games on the team's bench. He helmed a dynasty of his own centered around Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili. Popovich won multiple titles with that core, with the last coming in 2014 over the dying embers of LeBron James' Miami Heat team.
Popovich is a legend and that's why the Spurs gave him a massive five-year, $80 million deal last offseason to stay with the franchise until (presumably) the end of his career.
Erik Spoelstra
Spoelstra's rise from video coordinator to championship-winning head coach is the stuff of legends and the Miami Heat were happy to reward him accordingly. After winning two titles with LeBron's Big 3 and twice winning the Eastern Conference with the Jimmy Butler/Bam Adebayo core, he signed an eight-year deal worth $120 million with the Heat in January 2024.
Spoelstra is widely recognized as one of the best tactical coaches in the game and, at only 53, has many good years ahead of him. Miami was wise to lock him up for the long run.
Tyronn Lue
Unlike the names above, Lue has not won a championship with his current team. He is a title-winning head coach after helping lead the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers to the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history, but Lue has spent the last few years in Los Angeles with the Clippers. He's gone 184-134 despite dealing with numerous injuries to Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, making one deep playoff run since he was hired ahead of the 2020-'21 season.
In May 2024, Lue signed a five-year $70 million deal with the Clippers. He has clearly found success with the franchise and they are happy to have him.
Monty Williams
Many an eyebrow was raised around the NBA when Williams signed a gigantic $78.5 million deal with the Detroit Pistons last summer. At the time it was the biggest contact given out to an NBA head coach in history. Williams had just finished up an uneven final season with the Phoenix Suns but was only two years removed from an NBA Finals appearance.
It took almost no time for things to go sideways. The Pistons set an NBA record for longest losing streak under Williams' watch and finished the 2023-'24 season with only 14 wins. Williams remains in place as the team's head coach but will have to start showing he's worth his high salary soon.
Here’s how such a move would impact UConn and what to look out for in the coming days should Hurley head to the NBA.
The beauty of the UConn job is very much in the eye of the beholder. On fundamentals alone, the job is less attractive than other blue bloods, given its location and the lack of big-time football money flowing through it, along with the subsequent long-term conference affiliation questions that come with that. Despite that, no program has had more success in the 2000s than UConn, winning national championships under three different coaches (two each by Hurley and Jim Calhoun, one by Kevin Ollie). The expectations for whoever would come next are national championships, plural. That’s a daunting task, especially given a potentially bearish financial future compared to the program’s peers in leagues with eight- and nine-figure annual television payouts coming soon.
The job opening in early June also presents problems. Wooing top coaches who’ve already built rosters for next season would be tricky and potentially complicated further by recent contract extensions that have ballooned buyouts into the $10 million or more range. A coach from outside the UConn family would also have his hands full retaining the current roster, a priority given UConn’s legitimate aspirations for a three-peat.
That makes an internal promotion perhaps the most realistic option, either on an interim basis for a year or on a full-time basis. UConn has two strong candidates on its current staff in associate head coach Kimani Young and assistant coach Luke Murray. The perceived favorite would be Young, who took over coaching duties when Hurley was ejected in a famous 2022 game against the Villanova Wildcats and owns the top title on staff. Young has long been due for a head coaching opportunity and has been openly praised by Hurley several times for his work both in game-planning and recruiting.
Hurley has praised Young for his game-planning and recruiting. / David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports
Murray, an X-and-O savant and the son of actor Bill Murray, could also emerge as a potential candidate. If not tabbed the head coach, Hurley seems likely to push for him to join his Lakers staff.
If a full search were opened up, it’d be fascinating to see which candidates emerge. Rutgers’s Steve Pikiell was on the board when Hurley took the job and he played and coached under Calhoun, but has his most talented team yet set to enroll at Rutgers this summer. Another regionally tied name that could make sense is Seton Hall’s Shaheen Holloway, who went to an Elite Eight as the head coach at St. Peter’s. Athletic director David Benedict could also take big swings at the likes of Auburn’s Bruce Pearl (a Massachusetts native) and Alabama’s Nate Oats (who previously worked in New York at Buffalo), but neither seems likely to land.
If Hurley leaves, every player on the Huskies would have a 30-day window to enter the transfer portal despite the portal being otherwise closed since May 1. Hurley rebuilt the Huskies’ roster this spring to have a chance to contend for a three-peat, reeling in highly regarded transfers Aidan Mahaney and Tarris Reed Jr., five-star freshman Liam McNeeley and retaining star forward Alex Karaban. A swift internal hire could help retain the current roster, though it isn’t a guarantee. Even with an internal hire made for 2023–24 after Bob Huggins was fired at West Virginia last June, five players entered the portal, with three eventually leaving.
Karaban chose to return to the Huskies instead of staying in the 2024 NBA draft. / Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
Given the way prices in the NIL market have exploded for top transfers as supply has shrunk in the last month, it’s safe to say there would be hugely lucrative offers on the table to try to woo UConn’s current roster into the portal. How Benedict handles this search could be the difference between the Huskies being deep in contention for a third straight championship and facing a near-impossible rebuild in June after a significant roster exodus.
In an era of significant turnover among the sport’s legendary coaches, Hurley had emerged as one of the new faces of the game. His fiery personality and ever-quotable news conferences, combined with the remarkable success of the last two years, gave Hurley the chance to take over the sport and become this generation’s John Wooden or Mike Krzyzewski. To lose Hurley to the NBA would be a brutal break for a sport hunting for star power for fans to attach themselves to.
Plus, UConn going for a historic third straight title would be one of the biggest stories of the 2024–25 season. That pursuit being derailed in June by a coaching search would be a crippling blow months before the season tips off.