By Miguel Mike Medina
Photo Credit: David Zalubowski/AP
The North Carolina Tar Heels will hire Michael Malone as their next head coach.
Malone led the Denver Nuggets to an NBA championship in 2023, when they defeated the Miami Heat in five games. Malone has not coached in College Basketball since he was an assistant at Manhattan College from 1999 to 2001.
UNC fired coach Hubert Davis after five seasons with the team. The Tar Heels were eliminated in the early round of the NCAA tournament by VCU. The Tar Heels went with someone outside of their family tree. The coaching tree at UNC has all been through connections from Dean Smith, Bill Guthridge, Matt Doherty, Roy Williams, and Davis.
The hiring of Malone comes as a surprise. It’s a splash hire, but the Tar Heels needed to take a risk and go with a coach who has experience and knows how to win. The Tar Heels were looking at other candidates before Malone, such as Michigan’s Dustin May and Arizona’s Thomas Lloyd.
It’s going to be a new era in Chapel Hill. It’s a different situation because the Tar Heels will have someone without connections to the program, but Malone is a respectable coach and human being. Malone definitely respects what the Tar Heels represent and stand for.
The Final Four is the destination the program is aiming for. Anything less than that is a failure in the Tar Heels program. Malone will be fine working with the Tar Heels. It’s going to be an interesting offseason to see what else the Tar Heels are going to pull off. Who else can they bring to the team? Will Caleb Wilson return after a tough end to the season due to injury?
Malone holds a 510–394 record in 12 seasons as an NBA coach (two with the Sacramento Kings and 10 with the Nuggets).
Miguel Mike Medina is the publisher of The MMM Journal. He can be reached at medinamiguelmike@gmail.com and themmmjournal@gmail.com
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