About an hour after successful a second nationwide championship in April, Dan Hurley stood in a hallway outdoors the Connecticut locker room, holding open his go well with jacket, trying like a person down on his luck, simply attempting to make a buck.
“The primary actual go well with I received,” Hurley mentioned.
Navy blue with a paisley lining, the customized tremendous 150 wool go well with was an extravagance when Hurley introduced it. That was again when he left Wagner School for the pinnacle teaching job at Rhode Island. He wanted it for his introductory information convention — a information convention held in March 2012. Twelve years in the past.
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Dan Hurley declines Lakers head-coaching job
“I imply, take a look at this factor,” Hurley mentioned, pointing on the tattered lining, at threadbare wool.
“And the way about these sneakers,” he added, “how f—ing jacked up are these sneakers?”
This was Dan Hurley at his defining second. Again-to-back nationwide championships to his title. A 68-11 document over the earlier two seasons. A program inbuilt his picture — powerful, loud, a great deal of angle. School basketball’s new kingpin.
Besides, Hurley is the uncommon breed who each must show he’s the very best round, and nonetheless be doubted, abruptly. That’s the wiring — and is why, when turning into the primary males’s faculty coach to go back-to-back since Billy Donovan at Florida, Hurley wanted it recognized that he was nonetheless the man who coached at Wagner, nonetheless the man everybody questioned, nonetheless the man primed by superstitions and insecurities, nonetheless the man within the shabby go well with.
On this gentle, his dalliance with the Los Angeles Lakers would possibly make a little bit extra sense. To Hurley, this was a child from Jersey Metropolis, N.J., interviewing for the freaking Lakers job. This was the man everybody doubted being supplied tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. And this was a reminder to everybody on the market that the kingpin has all the facility.
If something, Monday’s announcement that Hurley is remaining in Storrs, Conn., may be a little bit stunning. By leaping to the NBA, he may’ve began his climb yet again, settled again into the function he is aware of so effectively. He may’ve been ridiculed as a school idiot who couldn’t coach professionals; as a hot-head wailer missing the disposition for an NBA sideline; as an East Coast windbag who couldn’t reduce it in L.A.
He would’ve in all probability cherished it.
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That is, in spite of everything, how Hurley operates. It is a former participant who grew up enjoying in his brother Bobby’s impossibly lengthy shadow. It is a coach who started teaching regardless of figuring out his dad, Bob Sr., already set an unattainable customary, one which took him from St. Anthony Excessive in Jersey Metropolis, N.J., to the Naismith Corridor of Fame.
In his current state, these insecurities are unattainable to conjure. Final season stripped away the final veneer of denial of Hurley’s place among the many finest coaches in faculty basketball. Maybe for the primary time in his life, the 51-year-old has complete and full respect, complete and full stability, complete and full success.
If you happen to perceive the deeper nook’s of Dan Hurley’s thoughts, you perceive this may be fairly uncomfortable for the person.
The very fact is, if anybody was ever going to ignore the previous teaching truism, Don’t mess with comfortable, after back-to-back titles, Hurley felt like a certain wager.
As a substitute, he’s opting to return to Connecticut, attempting to maintain the practice rolling. His roster is shedding Donovan Clingan and Tristen Newton, however is a preseason top-five group.
The Huskies might be good once more. They’ll win a whole lot of video games. Most likely. Nevertheless it’s price questioning how a lot Hurley will proceed enthusiastic about this waltz with L.A.
By remaining in faculty basketball, Hurley has what, precisely, left to perform? Chase one thing as fickle as a three-peat? Stay enmeshed within the invisible battle that’s faculty basketball’s present state, only for the hell of it?
Hurley isn’t anti-NIL. Neither is he anti-player freedom. However he’s brazenly appalled by how dysfunctional faculty basketball has grow to be. He mentioned in March he wished to see adjustments. Actual adjustments.
Possibly some widespread sense adjustments to the calendar or some guardrails raised. Possibly the creation of an all-powerful commissioner to convey some order to issues. In reality, he knew all alongside he was shouting right into a void. None of that may occur and faculty basketball will as an alternative stay on the mercy of faculty soccer, rising solely increasingly more unrecognizable.
He turned down an unbelievable amount of cash, nonetheless. He’s additionally surrendered the fitting to complain about switch portal temptations ruining the sport. That’s the value for constructing a roster, then brazenly contemplating leaving this system in June.
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Again at UConn, the six-year contract price $32.1 million that Hurley signed in 2023 is being torn up and remade. It’s notable that the brand new deal didn’t come instantly after the second consecutive nationwide title was placed on the shelf. It was in all probability notable to Hurley.
Any new contract, although, feels irrelevant within the large image. Hurley’s determination to stay with UConn in all probability says extra about how he noticed his match with the Lakers than it does his emotions about teaching within the NBA.
See, Hurley really makes a whole lot of sense within the league. He understands the contours required in sure relationships and has spent his life enwrapped in player-coach energy dynamics. As a youthful coach at St. Benedict’s Prep, Hurley gained a rep for having the ability to appease a number of stars, feed a whole lot of mouths. At UConn, his first nationwide title got here when he entrusted three NBA prospects — Andre Jackson, Jordan Hawkins and Adama Sanogo — to take possession of the group.
Hurley is sensible, as a coach and as a pliable chief. So he’ll finally attempt his hand on the NBA. However that’s down the road.
For now, he’s preserving issues easy. He’ll give contentment a attempt.
(Photograph: Mitchell Layton / Getty Photographs)