By Aidan Joly
Sometimes, the best additions are the ones you already have.
That sentiment can certainly be said for what happened Monday as the state of Connecticut breaths a sign of relief. Just before 1:45 p.m., the news broke that Dan Hurley had turned down a reported six-year, $70 million offer from the Los Angeles Lakers in order to return to UConn and go for a third straight national title.
It ends a story that dominated the sports discourse since Thursday morning and through the rest of the weekend. A classic will-he-stay-or-will-he-go decision as the two-time reigning national champion mulled over what would have been a seismic shift in the college basketball landscape.
It speaks to how loyal Hurley is. He’s from Jersey City, is a northeast guy, and like I said in a previous column on Thursday, he is a guy who understands the UConn program and what it takes to win there, and winning he has done. A 141-58 record in six years in Storrs, of course, the two national titles, a Big East championship, and a Naismith coach of the year award earlier this year. It’s a heck of a win for UConn as he also turned down Kentucky earlier in the off-season.
It’s a win for college basketball as it keeps one of the faces of the sport, after losing so many the past few years from the retirements of Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jay Wright and Jim Boeheim. Hurley is already a hall of famer, but will have an opportunity to become one of the sport’s immortals, if he wants that.
The Hurley family is known to be very close. The family surely played a role in the decision, including his wife Andrea and his father Bob. He’s also very loyal to what he has built at UConn the past few years.
That doesn’t mean he will never leave UConn. Heck, we might be doing this whole show again a year from now if another big NBA job opens up. Hurley has been open about his desire to coach in the NBA one day. Maybe that job will be the New York Knicks when that job eventually opens. I tend to think that if this whole situation was the same, but if it was the Knicks, there is a very good chance Hurley would have taken the gig. At 51 years old, he still has plenty of coaching left in him.
He didn’t even stay in Southern California for long. He met with the Lakers brass on Friday and was back in the area by Saturday night, evidenced by a cryptic Instagram story post from UConn assistant Luke Murray of himself and the Hurleys at a Billy Joel concert at Madison Square Garden. Hurley was wearing a “New York New York” shirt and throwing up a peace sign, looking relaxed and maybe even signifying that he was leaning staying by that point. That’s super reading into it, but it’s certainly possible. At the time we thought it was an eight-year, $100 million deal that was offered. We later learned it wasn’t that.
Speaking of the Lakers, where do they go from here? Getting turned down by Hurley at a significantly lower number than what was initially reported is a bad look. Even if he took the $70 million, it would not have made him even a top five highest paid coach in the league and not even the highest paid coach in Los Angeles (Clippers coach Ty Lue makes around $14 million per year). If you are a premier franchise and you have your guy, who didn’t want to leave in the first place, you have to blow him away to convince him. The Lakers didn’t do that and now they will pay for it.
It makes Los Angeles one of two teams in the NBA (Cleveland) without a head coach with less than three weeks until the NBA draft. Former veteran shooting guard and current ESPN analyst JJ Redick was long rumored to be the top candidate, but now one can wonder if Jeanie Buss and Rob Pelinka will circle back to him, and even if Redick would want the job after all of this. New Orleans Pelicans assistant and former Charlotte Hornets head coach James Borrego is still out there, as is longtime NBA assistant Sam Cassell, currently with the Boston Celtics. If it’s not one of those three, it’s a total disaster of a head coach search.
Now, he will have a chance to do something that hasn’t been done since John Wooden, and that is win three straight NCAA championships. He’s the only one who can truly say whether or not he made the right decision.
Winning three straight championships is an extremely hard task, but UConn will head into the season with the best coach in the country and a top-five roster in the country. It will be fascinating to see what UConn will do this year, and on a broader brush stroke, what the rest of Hurley’s coaching years will look like.
AJ Hoops 