North Carolina is hiring a coach with an NBA background to be its next men’s basketball head coach. However, it isn’t the NBA coach that many had speculated could become the next head man of the Tar Heels.
Former Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone is expected to be hired as UNC’s next head coach, ESPN reported Monday. Malone, who helped coach the Nuggets to an NBA title in 2023, has never been a head coach at the college level, and hasn’t coached in the college game since 2001.
Malone’s reported hire is a bit of a surprise. He wasn’t even speculated by most insiders as a potential candidate for the job, and there hadn’t been any credible reports indicating that UNC was interested in hiring him. Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan had been rumored as the top candidate for the job after Michigan’s Dusty May and Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd reportedly withdrew their names from consideration.
Malone does have a connection to UNC’s athletic department, though. His daughter, Bridget, plays for the university’s women’s volleyball team.
The reported hiring of Malone came nearly two weeks after UNC opted to fire head coach Hubert Davis after five seasons. Davis, who also played college basketball at UNC, went 125-54 over his tenure with the program, helping the Tar Heels play in the national championship game in his first season at the helm. But UNC opted to fire Davis after it blew a large lead to VCU in its upset loss in the first round of this year’s NCAA Tournament. It marked the second straight year that UNC failed to advance past the first round.
Malone, 54, was widely regarded as one of the top head coaches in the NBA over his 10-year stint with the Nuggets. He’s gone 510-394 in his NBA head coaching career, helping Denver become a playoff mainstay by the end of his tenure before he was abruptly fired just days before the start of the 2025 NBA Playoffs. Malone was also previously the head coach of the Sacramento Kings, but was fired not long into his second season with the team in 2014.
Prior to becoming an NBA assistant head coach in 2001, Malone was an assistant coach at Oakland, Providence and Manhattan.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
