Dallas Mavericks hiring Dusty May is a scathing indictment on college basketball
Dusty May should still be the head coach at the University of Michigan, where he should be preparing for another season, and soon watching a national title banner drop from the rafters at Crisler Center in Ann Arbor.
Instead, he’s the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, and the fact that he even considered leaving one of the best jobs in basketball tells you everything you have heard about the state of the profession on the college level.
The stories are not true; they’re worse. The giraffe runs the zoo. The janitor of the school is more important than the principal. The plumber is just as valuable as the CEO.
There is no coach more powerless than the college basketball coach. Whereas John Wooden or Dean Smith may have figured out how to make it today, Bob Knight would be lucky to keep a job as a gym teacher at a middle school in Homeless, Ohio.
All three men are dead, and if they were alive today they would not recognize the profession they helped make into a celebrity job. Now, it’s a seven-figure baby-sitting gig.
A gig that May was done with. On Monday, the Mavericks formally introduced May as their new head coach; it was announced last week, but May met with the media on Monday along with team president of basketball operations, Masai Ujiri.
May left Michigan because he thinks he can be more of a coach to a roster of NBA players rather than college kids. March Madness indeed.
Dusty May downplays why he left Michigan for the Mavericks
Between Florida Atlantic and Michigan, May’s record is nearly flawless; he took Florida Atlantic to the Final Four, and he won a national title at Michigan.
He’s 49, and he was preparing for his third year at a destination job. Whatever happens in college athletics, and however the particulars change, Michigan is one of those schools that will be fine regardless of the “rules.” Michigan is one of the few schools that make the rules.
And he left for a team that is rebuilding, and did not make the Play-In round last season.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a big reason,” May said when I asked him if the state of college athletics is a big reason why he is the head coach of the Mavericks. “The big reasons are the people in this facility. It’s much more complicated than it used to be. I love teaching. I love coaching. I love being a part of a team. And in college basketball you don’t get to do near as much as you used to.”
May’s exit is a loss for college basketball, and his statement is felt, and shared, by nearly all of those remain in it.
He would rather take the risk of coaching an NBA team, which historically is a high-paying gig with terrible job security, than stay at one of the best college jobs in the sport.
Why Dusty May feels he won’t be like other NCAA coaches who jump to NBA
Ujiri made this call to hire May because he sees no difference any longer before the college and pro game.
“Outside of ‘He’s a college coach,’ that’s the only thing I’ve heard,” he said after the press conference ended to a small number of straggling reporters. “The college game is a professional game now.”
From a style standpoint, he’s right. Any basketball game with a shot clock now looks like an NBA game. Positions don’t matter. Offenses are simple. Push the ball. Shoot the 3.
College players get paid. Their coaches are prisoners to the kids’ talent. Sounds like the pro game.
May follows a long list of college coaches to try the NBA. Don’t bother looking at their records. They’re awful.
Larry Brown remains the only coach to win an NBA and NCAA title; he was the oddest of quacks who also could have coached a Basset Hound to the Triple Crown.
Nearly every other NCAA-to-NBA coach has followed the same path: Accept a big check, inherit a bad team, get fired, return to college. John Calipari, Jerry Tarkanian, Butch Beard, John Beilein, Mike Montgomery, Fred Hoiberg, Lon Kruger, Leonard Hamilton and so many others were all winning college coaches who didn’t make it in the NBA.
When asked to address this perception, May pointed to the similarities of the game now, and the success of former Florida coach Billy Donovan, who has had a long run with Oklahoma City and Chicago. Donovan has been an NBA coach for 11 seasons, and after reaching the NBA Finals in his first year with the Thunder, he’s never won another playoff series.
The evolution of the game may make May’s transition from the NCAA to NBA not easy but easier.
The evolution of the game played a role in May’s decision to leave one of the best jobs in college basketball for an NBA rebuild.
It says everything about Michigan and the NCAA than it does the Mavericks and the NBA.
