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.”
“One of the worst takes I’ve heard is that this was a leverage play…I don’t need leverage here. We’ve won back to back national championships.”
– Dan Hurley shuts down the rumors that this was all some sort of leverage play to get a better contract with UConn.
— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) June 13, 2024
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.
The Los Angeles Lakers are going to eventually pick a head coach to lead them into next season and when that happens, it won't really matter who breaks the news three minutes before the rest of the world has it. But being cynical isn't as fun as keeping score in the Adrian Wojnarowski-Shams Charania parlor game, which has an interesting new chapter based on some at-odds reporting on L.A.'s search.
Less than 48 hours ago, The Athletic's Charania shoveled some more fuel into the JJ Redick hot-stove by establishing the player-turned-podcaster-slash-broadcaster as the leader in the clubhouse.
The Los Angeles Lakers are zeroing in on JJ Redick as the front-runner to be the franchise’s next head coach, league and media industry sources told The Athletic.
No final decision has been made yet, and the Lakers still have steps remaining in their head-coaching search process, league sources said. But the indications are strong that Redick is their leading choice at this stage.
The Lakers have had preliminary contact with Hurley and the sides are planning to escalate discussions in the coming days, sources told ESPN. Hurley has been at the forefront of the Lakers' search from the beginning of the process, even while the organization has done its due diligence interviewing several other candidates, sources said.
So one can see the problem. Redick and Hurley can't both coach the Lakers unless one of them wants to leave a great gig to become an assistant.
At times like these it's important to parse the language and point out that we're all in this situation because step-by-step reporting of each and every twist and turn of the process has been turned into an opportunity for news. In the not-so-distant past a consumer would only hear about a team selecting a new coach when that coach had been selected. It was less entertaining but that world didn't require a dictionary and thesaurus to divine meaning from the verbs included in every stage.
And that's not a slight. Woj and Shams are at the top of the field. But there's a real chance neither Redick nor Hurley coaches the Lakers next year, despite all the "zeroing in" and "targeting." In the court of public opinion, fair or otherwise, Shams is the Redick guy now and Woj is the Hurley guy. No one is going to do the work of parsing all the semantics and journalism to give either an out if life happens and talks don't go well or offers aren't accepted or matched.
Until there's a final decision the winner in these types of situations tends to be the person with the most recent information, which would be Wojanarowski. There's certainly something to be said about waking up in the morning to a legitimately shocking chyron on the screen and considering an event horizon that would profoundly impact both pro and college basketball.
It's nice to be reminded every so often that the Woj-Shams sideshow can be a lot of fun once a person gets out of the weeds and learns to embrace the bombs.
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.
The Los Angeles Lakers’ courtship of Dan Hurley made all the sense in the world—for the Lakers. They don’t just need a great coach; they need LeBron James to believe they have a great coach. James has already publicly lauded Hurley. And, as ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski thoroughly laid out, Hurley would also be an ideal coach for James’s son, Bronny, if the Lakers draft him later this month. The plan was a classic Lakers combination of sizzle, smarts and timing.
Hurley has a better chance of winning a title at UConn next season than he would with the Lakers. But this was not just a choice between staying at Connecticut and leaving for the Lakers. Hurley was also choosing between the Lakers job and whatever job offers might come his way in the next few years.
Hurley has no reason to leave UConn for another college job, but if he wants to coach in the NBA, he will have more opportunities. Billy Donovan won back-to-back NCAA championships with the Florida Gators, stayed for eight more years and then left for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Brad Stevens took the Butler Bulldogs to back-to-back national title games, stayed at Butler for two more years, and then went to the Boston Celtics.
The NBA will keep calling. The Lakers, meanwhile, offered glamour, money and a hundred ways this could end poorly. Six weeks ago, when the Denver Nuggets casually dismissed the Lakers in the first round of the NBA playoffs, who thought the Lakers were on the verge of another championship? LeBron will be 40 in December. Anthony Davis is 31 and averaged 52 games over the past four seasons. The Lakers have the 17th pick in this year’s draft, which is considered fairly weak, and their 2025 first-rounder is on its way to the New Orleans Pelicans.
The Lakers might view Hurley as a great coach for LeBron and Bronny, but how would that have worked out for Hurley? One reason LeBron is an all-time great player is that he sees and understands the game as well as elite coaches. He also has a better understanding of how to use his power than any player in NBA history. Add that up, and this is what it means if you coach him: You will win a lot of games, and you will be on notice perpetually.
Of LeBron’s last five coaches, three were fired by the end of their second year with him. A fourth, Frank Vogel, won a championship in Year 1 and still got fired after Year 3. During that same time period, NBA reality derailed the Golden State Warriors’ “two timeline” strategy: Most young players are not ready to contribute to winning, but they need playing time to develop.
How was Hurley going to satisfy LeBron’s desire for another championship and help Bronny become an NBA starter? And if he didn’t, who would pay for it?
Look, this could work out for whoever gets the Lakers job. Davis and James are still stars, and maybe the Lakers will nail a trade and create another window for a championship. But it’s unlikely, and that window would be small, anyway.
The next Lakers coach will be part of a complex and delicate power structure. James and Davis are both Klutch Sports Group clients. Lakers vice president and general manager Rob Pelinka is a veteran of NBA politics and maneuvering. Klutch CEO Rich Paul will look out for his guys, as he always does (and as he always should). Pelinka will try to balance the talents and egos of everybody in a way that produces success. They might all go into this with the best of intentions, but it is still tricky territory.
At UConn, Hurley is the singular dominant force in his program. He decides who to recruit and what plays to run. Nobody on that UConn team next season can create a weeklong story about Hurley’s job security with a single emoji, the way James did to Darvin Ham last season.
That does not make UConn a perfect situation. College sports are in a chaotic state. But Hurley has navigated the chaos as well as anybody. It is also worth noting that 16 months ago, Hurley was in his fifth season at UConn and had never led the Huskies past the round of 64. He might have harbored NBA aspirations at the time, but they were not realistic yet. This is all new to him.
Hurley just bought himself time to read the landscape and decide if he really wants to coach pros. If he does, he can figure out which jobs and circumstances would give him the best chance at success. For most coaches, an NBA job is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Dan Hurley is not most coaches.
