UNC Basketball Possible coaches - UNC hires ex-Nuggets HC Michael Malone

Bigs23 said:
Still salty about the implosion I see.
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Nah. That was our fault + the injuries to Foster and Ngongba. I heard UNC fired Hubert again because the collapse was so great.

I'm not sure how it's Hubert's fault he lost Cadeau to the portal and Wilson to injury.

You all know the risks for coaches switching venues. Generally, college --> NBA and NBA --> college usually don't work out. Larry Brown is sort of an exception, but the 1980 2nd place finish for UCLA has been vacated. 1988 was luck. Some credit for 2004 NBA title after Detroit gathered talent when trading an injured Grant Hill in 2020 (who the Pistons should have shut down after the initial ankle injury and no hope of extending the playoffs).
 
Duke Mu said:
Nah. That was our fault + the injuries to Foster and Ngongba. I heard UNC fired Hubert again because the collapse was so great.

I'm not sure how it's Hubert's fault he lost Cadeau to the portal and Wilson to injury.

You all know the risks for coaches switching venues. Generally, college --> NBA and NBA --> college usually don't work out. Larry Brown is sort of an exception, but the 1980 2nd place finish for UCLA has been vacated. 1988 was luck. Some credit for 2004 NBA title after Detroit gathered talent when trading an injured Grant Hill in 2020 (who the Pistons should have shut down after the initial ankle injury and no hope of extending the playoffs).
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Nobody gives a fuck what you think.
 
Trying to give this all time to sink in. While I really want to like the hire, I think I’m just too jaded from Belichick lol. The two situations do differ in a lot of ways though:

  • Malone is two decades younger and is still coveted by pro teams/was still doing well in the NBA the last time he was coaching. Yes, the fact that he didn’t get along well with people within the organization is a red flag, but it doesn’t seem like the game has totally passed him by like we see with Belichick.
  • He doesn’t have to navigate nearly as many moving parts to fill out a staff and roster compared to a new football coach.
  • Most importantly, he doesn’t strike me as someone that assumes he’s just going to roll the balls out and dominate without putting in the effort, which is the vibe I’ve gotten from Belichick and co., and imo is maybe the biggest reason why that experiment went off the rails.
Even typing all that out kinda sounds like coping. I’ll be really curious to see how the portal shakes out the next few weeks.
 
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SnoopRob said:
I see this as a medium-risk/high-reward hire.

Malone has had success in the NBA and is known as an Xs and Os guy. To me, that means his floor is pretty high unless he just can't relate to college-aged players or the time limits on coaching in CBB limit how much he can teach them. And, given his background, if he can figure out recruiting and working with lower talented players, the ceiling is the roof.

Maybe it's just me, but i see the bigger risk from Malone being that he is successful enough to not give Carolina a reason to fire him but not so successful that we compete for national championships. Not as up-and-down as HD, but teams that are consistently top 15 but not top 5. Which isn't the worst outcome, but would be rough at a school like Carolina.
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Malone's floor is high in terms of on-court coaching. I do think his floor is a fair bit lower when it comes to building and managing a college roster. The risk you identify may be a risk, but I don't think it's the biggest risk - I think the biggest risk is that he ends up not being well-suited to scouting for and assembling a college roster that fits what he wants to do. It's just not the same as evaluating, acquiring, and keeping talent at the NBA level. The difference is not as stark as that between NFL/college coaching because bball rosters are much smaller, but it is still a real difference that creates a real risk.

So ultimately my greatest fear of how this hire could go south is a less dramatic version of what we've seen with Belichick - that a guy who is used to what he's looking for in personnel at the pro level is unable to adapt both his talent parameters and what he's trying to do on the court to personnel at the college level who are, on the whole, smaller, less athletic, lass skilled, and less polished. And then add in that he will have to get used to managing players who are less emotionally mature than what he's used to.
 
4thgenheel said:
this is just pretty demonstrably false in this day and age. even blue bloods are not luring established, big-time coaches away from their comfortable current gigs.

kentucky was unable to do it a couple of years ago and i doubt kansas will be able to do it whenever self leaves. dook promoted from within.

all of the truly top tier, high ceiling high floor coaches were either unavailable or we weren't interested - stevens, lloyd, may, tjo, the uf creep, hurley, oats, etc. and aside from stevens, those guys were all the same type of high risk/reward hires a few years ago when they got picked up by their current schools. they were all either assistants or came from mid majors.
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Last paragraph hits the nail on the head. All of the people acting like UNC not being able to steal Dusty May or Tommy Lloyd is a major indictment of the program need to take a closer look at all of the best programs from the last decade or so and where they hired their coaches.

It’s a little bit different compared to football, where geography still matters for recruiting purposes and coaches can be enticed to jump from a stable job to one with higher theoretical upside (ex: Lane Kiffin leaving a good setup at Ole Miss because LSU’s HS recruiting footprint is just that good). That sort of thing just isn’t much of a factor on the basketball side.
 
rodoheel said:
Malone's floor is high in terms of on-court coaching. I do think his floor is a fair bit lower when it comes to building and managing a college roster. The risk you identify may be a risk, but I don't think it's the biggest risk - I think the biggest risk is that he ends up not being well-suited to scouting for and assembling a college roster that fits what he wants to do. It's just not the same as evaluating, acquiring, and keeping talent at the NBA level. The difference is not as stark as that between NFL/college coaching because bball rosters are much smaller, but it is still a real difference that creates a real risk.

So ultimately my greatest fear of how this hire could go south is a less dramatic version of what we've seen with Belichick - that a guy who is used to what he's looking for in personnel at the pro level is unable to adapt both his talent parameters and what he's trying to do on the court to personnel at the college level who are, on the whole, smaller, less athletic, lass skilled, and less polished. And then add in that he will have to get used to managing players who are less emotionally mature than what he's used to.
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I'm not quite as worried about the talent level because Carolina Basketball will almost certainly do what it needs to do to bring in near the top of CBB talent whereas Carolina Football doesn't have the money nor brand to make that happen. Carolina Football is more of a "do more with less" program (compared to the upper echelon of CFB) while Carolina Basketball is a "do more with more" program (compared to almost anyone outside of Durham).

I do think he'll need some help understanding the college game from a talent recruitment standpoint, but that's where he hopefully gets good assistants (like the lead assistant coach we're supposedly targeting). And I think that Carolina helps recruit itself (provided the money is right), so I'm not as concerned about talent as I am how it's utilized. And I think we have a coach who will know how to utilize it.
 
Peppers49 said:
Last paragraph hits the nail on the head. All of the people acting like UNC not being able to steal Dusty May or Tommy Lloyd is a major indictment of the program need to take a closer look at all of the best programs from the last decade or so and where they hired their coaches.

It’s a little bit different compared to football, where geography still matters for recruiting purposes and coaches can be enticed to jump from a stable job to one with higher theoretical upside (ex: Lane Kiffin leaving a good setup at Ole Miss because LSU’s HS recruiting footprint is just that good). That sort of thing just isn’t much of a factor on the basketball side.
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I think that part of what has to be considered is that Arizona and Michigan are both very good to great program/jobs in their own right, possibly top 10 and certainly top 15 in CBB.

I think Carolina Basketball could have pulled someone from the equivalent of Ole Miss' Football had they focused solely on getting a current college HC.
 
wmheel1287 said:
I think we need to keep some of the current staff just because of continuity...not even Carolina continuity necessarily but continuity of people who know college basketball, the portal, etc. One of the huge failures of the Belichick fiasco was (to me) having not just a HC who didn't know college football but a staff of mostly all people who don't know it either.
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I think that would be a huge mistake. For this to work, you guys need to let Malone do his thing. If he wants them there, that’s one thing, but if you’re going to be dictating staff/continuity/family to him, this is doomed from the jump.

IMHO of course.
 
dukeman92 said:
I think that would be a huge mistake. For this to work, you guys need to let Malone do his thing. If he wants them there, that’s one thing, but if you’re going to be dictating staff/continuity/family to him, this is doomed from the jump.

IMHO of course.
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It’s pretty normal for new coaches to retain an assistant or two from the previous staff for continuity’s sake. I would be surprised if UNC mandated that Malone had to keep some of those guys around for the sake of “family” or whatever if he didn’t want them.
 
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