Thamel: UNC hiring Mike Malone
- Thread starter The_Catfather
- Start date
Seems like another gamble. Wonder if this one has a twenty something year old hot girlfriend like Belechik? I suspect this will work out just like that hire.
Wonder if they offered the St Louis guy? I think that's the answer for us next time, get the best young coach at a non-major school. Like May from FAU or Golden from San Fran. Not sure if Schertz is necessarily the guy (he's not really young) but someone in that mold. Swing for the fences with someone young, hungry and innovative.
Winning in the pros doesn’t always translate over to college. Would you rather have (what we thought) was an upcoming College Coach? Or an NBA guy who’s unproven in College?
I'd take Mike Malone, Joe Mazzula, Nick Nurse, Rick Carlise, and Erik Spolestra.
Can we at least be honest for a minute and admit mark pope was a bad hire?
Bill Belichick Light! At least Belichick had a resume as the dominant professional coach of his generation and you could figure some guys would just want to play for him because of the name. But we all saw how little that mattered when trying to adjust to today's college game.
Malone won one NBA title three years ago, then got forced out -- to be an NBA analyst. (Maybe he's actually Hubert Davis 2.0) I'm guessing he's litle known to the average high-profile basketball player. To repeat the Belichick experiment with their basketball program is Einstein's definition of insanity - to repeat a failure and expect a different outcome.
To call this a high-risk move is more of an understatement than to say maybe Rashad McCants didn't EARN his Dean's List status at UNC-Cheats when he admitted to never going to a class or writing a paper.
As someone who despises the most corrupt program in college basketball history, this was as good as I could hope for.
Malone won one NBA title three years ago, then got forced out -- to be an NBA analyst. (Maybe he's actually Hubert Davis 2.0) I'm guessing he's litle known to the average high-profile basketball player. To repeat the Belichick experiment with their basketball program is Einstein's definition of insanity - to repeat a failure and expect a different outcome.
To call this a high-risk move is more of an understatement than to say maybe Rashad McCants didn't EARN his Dean's List status at UNC-Cheats when he admitted to never going to a class or writing a paper.
As someone who despises the most corrupt program in college basketball history, this was as good as I could hope for.
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When we see what he can do with a healthy lineup, or can’t do, we’ll know the answer.
Or Mike Woodson.
The problem is we already know how you’d react to hiring a coach here with zero college experience. Some of you use one measure for your own school and another measure for everyone else’s. Malone wasn’t even a top 10 candidate for that job and you know it. Can he coach X’s and O’s? Sure.
What’s his philosophy on the transfer portal?
What’s his high school recruiting philosophy?
What’s his tactical approach to college defenses?
ETC ETC ETC
It is a massive, massive risk of a hire. Obviously.
Agree. I was one of the crushed for simply stating UK wasn’t firing Pope and were weren’t getting an established college coach.
I knew Pope wasn’t getting fired this season no matter how bad it was, and that we wouldn’t be able to select our next coach by clicking our heels and releasing a plume of blue smoke from Rupp’s chimney.
Good take,.
He's a strong enough coach that this could work out really well for them, but it is definitely a gamble.
Look man, I'm taking the guy who an NBA title. In the highest basketball league in the world. And won 500 games over a mid-major NCAA coach, ala Josh Schertz. I'm sure he can get come up with a recruiting pitch to high schoolers among transfers. NIL money+ "Hey, I won a title in the NBA, coached Jokic, I know what it takes to get to the league". The most important thing, is can he coach? It's clear he can.
I agree. He needs to hire a good Gm and recruiter.
I of course hope he fails. He is a bit of a strange hire.
Few people here will agree with you but I'm one of the few. You aren't going to hire May or Golden these days. You have to find the NEXT May or Golden before someone else does. But 90 percent of folks on here expect a final four established coach and that's a pipe dream now.
Will either be a failure like John MacLeod was at Notre Dame or a big success like Pete Carroll was at USC.
Let's see what kind of contract they give him initially, having NBA experience is definitely a plus
Difference between who he listed and Mike Woodson is Woodson never really did anything in the nba
I think Mark Pope was 100% the wrong hire and a bad one. He’s an average coach at best. That being said this is also an awful hire by UNC. If it was us making this panic hire the board would be self destructing.
It’s UNC so I’m sure he won’t be awful because by name alone you make the tournament 95% of the time but I don’t see him suddenly becoming elite. He won an NBA title because he had Jokic, not because he was some phenomenal coach.
It’s a completely different level with different challenges. Maybe Malone adapts and crushes it. Maybe he doesn’t and fails hard.
Your shooting guard sucks in the NBA? Trade for a good one or hit the waiver wire. In college, you are stuck with that roster until the offseason. Same with injuries. In the pros you can add pieces at any time. In college, the roster is static.
This might work. Might not. Could be the next Roy Williams. Could he Mike Woodson. We’ll see.
However, those of us who said UNC would not get an established college coach with an elite P4 resume (Oats, May, Lloyd, Golden, etc.) were absolutely correct.
I don't respond to Richie but I would bet the farm that if UK hired a coach who had never been a head coach for college ball a day in his life, he would absolutely lose his sh#t.
I wouldn't celebrate just yet. Dude is a heck of a coach, and his tougher style might play better in college than today's NBA
I don't think anyone knows how this will go. He's clearly a good coach. He develops players well. But he's also got a mean streak and demands players work hard on defense.
I think it's funny I was talking about him as an option when the Pay sites weren't.
I want to see who he hires for his staff, if he keeps our new GM or hires his own, and what the roster looks like.
But he is clearly a 1000 times better than Hubert Davis, and NBA teams were expected to be after Malone this offseason.
Seems like Donovan wanted to coach more blowout Bulls losses before making a decision. That would have put UNC behind everyone on portal recruiting before we even had a coach.
The guy won an NBA title three years ago.
Yeah he’s a good coach, we’ll see how well he can recruit pretty quickly
Says the guy who guaranteed Stackhouse would be hired.
It's weird to see you troll the board of the team you support.
You can say that about any coach. If he can get real good recruits, chances are that they will be good.
How did I guess you'd spin any hire into a home run lol.
I think hes a pretty good coach, for the NBA. I still don't see the whole "NBA-to-College angle, especially when the coach was never more than a college assistant back in the 90s. His success and the ability to be a 10-year NBA coach was 100% due Joker being an absolute unicorn.
This is the type of hire that will probably last a good 6-8 years at UNC.. but won't really move the needle.