Dan Hurley is staying at UConn. Coming off back-to-back nationwide championships, the celebrated Husky males’s basketball coach Monday spurned a proposal from the Los Angeles Lakers to hitch them and greater than double his wage within the course of.
Aman Kidwai, longtime author for The UConn Weblog, has three the reason why the Lakers’ reported six-year, $70-million supply wasn’t sufficient to lure coach Hurley to the NBA.
1. The Lakers are the unsuitable group for Hurley
The Los Angeles Lakers are tied for the all-time NBA lead with 17 championships. However the final three seasons haven’t gone effectively—even with celebrity Lebron James within the lineup. They’ve completed no higher than seventh within the NBA’s Western Convention throughout that span. And with James at the moment 39 years previous and a possible free agent, Kidwai mentioned Hurley would have been strolling into a really tough state of affairs.
“You have bought executives that meddle, you’ve got bought an possession that meddles,” Kidwai mentioned. “After which additionally a star participant [Lebron James] that it’s a must to take care of who may make you draft his son [USC Trojan guard Bronny James] together with your first-round choose.”
Kidwai thinks Hurley could be happier with an NBA group comprised of youthful gamers.
“I feel he’d need extra of a state of affairs [where] you’ll be able to construct one thing from the bottom up,” Kidwai mentioned.
2. Full management at UConn
At UConn, Dan Hurley has the kind of management that Kidwai thinks he might by no means have with any NBA group.
“Dan Hurley has full management of the state of affairs high to backside and runs this system in his imaginative and prescient.” Kidwai mentioned.
3. Household and regional ties
Dan Hurley’s ties to the northeastern United States run deep. He grew up in New Jersey, the place his father, Bob Sr., was a legendary highschool basketball coach. It was in New Jersey that Hurley turned a prep basketball star, a university basketball star and a first-time head coach. A lot of he and his spouse, Andrea’s buddy and household community stays within the northeast.
“We all know that he needed to plead together with his spouse to maneuver to Rhode Island for the URI [University of Rhode Island] job,” Kidwai mentioned. “The thought of them transferring throughout the nation? It appeared like one thing they did not need to do, one thing that got here up when Hurley had the curiosity from Kentucky earlier this offseason.”
A win for UConn…for now
Kidwai mentioned Hurley’s choice to remain is an enormous win for UConn.
“They’ve a coach who may very well be teaching anyplace, however chooses to be proper there in Storrs,” Kidwai mentioned. “All the blissful emotions and momentum that UConn followers had one week in the past, earlier than they ever knew about any of this, it is all again there and just a bit bit stronger as a result of now followers have sort of reckoned with the potential for issues getting shaken up.”
Kidwai cautioned that UConn and Husky followers in all places ought to put together to get “shaken up” by NBA curiosity each off season any more whereas Hurley stays in Storrs. For now, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont mentioned the state would be sure Hurley is the top-paid faculty coach if he remained with the Huskies.
“I feel he will probably be a gorgeous choice for the NBA, however I do not suppose it is going to be simply any NBA group or any NBA job,” Kidwai mentioned. “And I and I do not suppose it is that high of thoughts for him to go to the NBA, you already know, like as quickly as potential. However, completely, It will be an ongoing concern.”