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North Carolina took a gamble hiring Michael Malone. It just might pay off

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There was always going to be something jarring about whoever North Carolina was going to hire as its next men’s basketball coach.

After firing Hubert Davis following a first-round NCAA tournament flameout last month, it was widely expected that for the first time in 74 years, the tradition-rich, arguably insular Tar Heels were going to get a replacement with no previous experience at the school as a student, player or assistant coach.

Still, even with that assumption, the end of their search for Davis’ successor managed to raise more than a few eyebrows.

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A storyline that loomed over the college basketball world for the past two weeks reached its conclusion on April 6, with North Carolina hiring longtime NBA coach Michael Malone to take over arguably the most prestigious and coveted job in the sport.

The move didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. Malone’s daughter, Bridget, is a sophomore on the Tar Heels’ volleyball team and, because of that, Malone has spent his share of time around Chapel Hill, all of which linked him to the job from virtually the moment it came open.

There’s plenty of reasons to like the decision, too. He led the Denver Nuggets to the NBA playoffs six times over his 10-year tenure, highlighted by a championship in 2023. He oversaw Nikola Jokic’s development into a three-time NBA MVP. He was widely regarded as a sharp tactical mind who knew how to coach defense and push the right buttons at the right time.

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In his tenures with the Nuggets and Sacramento Kings, Malone built strong relationships with players, even with the famously mercurial DeMarcus Cousins. Though his intensity reportedly wore on his Nuggets players over time, leading to his surprising ouster last April with three games still remaining in the regular season, it came after a decade in Denver — and after plenty of wins. It wasn’t a reflection of his abilities as a coach; it was simply time for a new voice.

For as lengthy and his resume is, Malone’s hiring presents a tremendous risk for North Carolina, which accounts for at least some of the astonishment around the freshly forged marriage.

Malone hasn’t coached at the college level since he was an assistant coach at Manhattan in 2001. After a quarter-century in the NBA, how will he adjust to coaching and trying to reach college kids? Though college basketball is becoming increasingly professionalized, he’s stepping into a sport that’s rapidly changing, from the influence of NIL to navigating the transfer portal and international recruiting.

Together, those challenges have befuddled and even overwhelmed some of the game’s most accomplished coaches, all of whom have significantly more experience with the college game’s various quirks and nuances than Malone. Even if he wins big in Chapel Hill, what’s stopping him from going back to the NBA, where he would have been one of the most sought-after coaches during this year’s hiring cycle?

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The next several weeks will be telling in just how well-equipped Malone is to excel out of the gate. Most crucially, after 25 years away from the college game, he’ll need to hire an on-court and front-office staff that can make up for his numerous blind spots. From there, he’ll need to build out a roster that will dictate the initial direction of his tenure.

While the comparisons and jokes are easy to make, this isn’t quite the same as the Tar Heels hiring Bill Belichick, another championship-winning professional coach, to lead their football program. At 54, Malone is 19 years younger than Belichick, putting him in his coaching prime rather than in the twilight of his career. Unlike Belichick, whose New England Patriots dynasty crumbled shortly after Tom Brady left, Malone was still winning at a high level at the end of his time with the Nuggets, with a 157-88 record in his final three seasons. Malone doesn’t arrive on Tobacco Road with an army of lackeys to fill out his most important staff positions or a significant other who spends her days stepping on public-relations rakes.

If this pairing fails, it will be hard to separate from Belichick, with North Carolina leadership thinking a big name with a fat championship ring on his hand can translate to a completely different sport. If it pays off — and given Malone’s famously furious work ethic, this is probably the more likely possibility — the Tar Heels will once again become one of the most feared forces in the country, an annual threat to win the ACC, make the Final Four and accomplish the kinds of things Davis largely failed to during his inconsistent five-year run at his alma mater.

In a sometimes meandering search, North Carolina didn’t get Tommy Lloyd or Dusty May, the types of proven winners at the power-conference level who would have been guaranteed success stories in Chapel Hill. But, even with all the questions Malone will have to answer, the Tar Heels may have gotten the next-best thing.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why North Carolina basketball hiring Michael Malone is a worthwhile gamble

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