Dom Amore: Lakers got in Dan Hurley’s head, but couldn’t wrest his heart from UConn

STORRS — Dan Hurley showed at the Werth Center to unpack from the strange trip he’d just taken, and taken UConn and all who care about its men’s basketball program with him.“In my gut, I knew he would stay,” said Hassan Diarra, who has helped the Huskies win two championships and is ready to lead the fight for at third. “He didn’t want to leave, he loves us too much.”If only it were that simple. The Lakers, one of the enduringly successful and popular franchises in NBA history called last week and complicated Hurley’s idyllic existence in Connecticut.Lamont lobbied Hurley: ‘We’ll make sure he’s the top-paid college coach’ but there’s more
“So many things go through your mind,” Hurley said three days after he turned down the Lakers’ offer to stay at UConn. “It’s your family, it’s where you are best suited to be as a coach, it’s a business side, it’s your loyalty to your players, it’s the relationship you have with Connecticut, a place where you’re happy. There are so many things, your mind races, it raced the whole time.”There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s get to it, let’s try to reconstruct a timeline.Hurley led the UConn men to a second straight national championship in April, and the six-year, $32.1 million contract he signed last June was now out of date. That may be hard for those not involved in college sports to get their minds around, but it’s reality. Kentucky was looking for a new head coach and would have thrown twice that much at Hurley.Hurley had no interest in leaving UConn for another college job and wanted his agent, Bret Just, to proceed accordingly. Within weeks, a new proposal was on Hurley’s desk that would make him the third highest-paid coach in college basketball, something like $50 million for six years, north of $8 million in average annual value.“It’s flattering, what (AD) Dave Benedict’s put in front of me,” Hurley said.But the deal was not, is not done. It’s not about becoming the highest paid coach in college basketball, a concept Gov. Ned Lamont has floated. A college coach’s contract has much more than salary to consider. There is making sure assistant coaches, so important to UConn’s success, in particular, are well compensated. The size of the support staff, access to resources for recruiting, the availability of name-image-likeness money for players.A few weeks ago, there was a court settlement in which the NCAA could soon implement a plan of revenue sharing. Will UConn have enough money to compete in that arena?
UConn’s Dan Hurley can now enjoy free wings for life after he turned down Lakers https://t.co/7t2mlmRt3J
— Hartford Courant (@hartfordcourant) June 11, 2024“That’s a factor,” Hurley said. “There are  lot of factors going through your mind, TV deals with conferences, what that $21 million dollars (for revenue sharing), where is that going to come from? What is that going to look like? Are we going to be at a competitive disadvantage? It wasn’t simple.”And since Hurley is bound to be courted by the NBA again, buyout language is another important consideration.“Those things are important to me, and always have been,” Hurley said. “When the Lakers come calling and you’re competitive, looking for challenges, want to be the best like I am, it’s something I had to consider. This was not a leverage situation. With back-to-backs, I’ve had plenty of leverage in the offseason. Hopefully we’ll be able to finalize something soon and have the whole contract done.”So maybe Hurley didn’t need leverage to get a higher salary, but he has it, and it doesn’t hurt as the fine print is written. The whole Lakers saga played out during the NBA Finals, wall-to-wall on ESPN’s shows, rose Hurley’s profile even higher. His decision was a major event. And money has poured in following it.By Tuesday, the collective Bleed Blue for Good brought in $16,000 in grassroots donations, starting with less than $1,000, executive director Jared Guy Thomas told Front Office Sports.So efforts to raise money for NIL got a Hurley bump. NBC Sports and TNT are now expected to join in the Big East’s next TV deal, more revenue to come there.And on a personal level, Hurley’s getting free wings, hot dogs, New Haven pizza for life. He now has the leverage to cut the line on Wooster Street and, if he wants to be vindictive, get Larry David barred from future games.We jest — on some of this — but what matters here is that Hurley did the right thing, the right thing by UConn and his players and for himself. There were plenty of reasons to say no to the Lakers, who may have vetted Hurley from the beginning, but didn’t come at him until more than a month after its job opened.It’s a dysfunctional franchise that doesn’t seem to know what it wants in a coach, and one never knows where the power lies on a given day.Though Hurley emphasized the possibility of coaching LeBron James was exciting to him, history shows that coaching all-time greats at the end of their careers can be very difficult. The Lakers reported offer of six years for $70 million which, given the cost of homes in Bel Air vs. Glastonbury, and the number of games in a season, didn’t represent a massive difference in net compensation, though it may have been only a first offer. This was just not a good fit, and while no one has broken even betting against Dan Hurley lately, he might not have had a chance to succeed there. He certainly wouldn’t have had the kind of control he has now.Dom Amore: UConn or Lakers? Dan Hurley has an excruciating choice, the greater of two blessings The Billy Joel concert on Saturday night, the day after Hurley came and went from LA, now a famous part of the timeline, probably wasn’t the best idea. “The lyrics were messing with my head,” Hurley said. When you’re faced with a big crisis, or a big decision, every song’s lyrics start to fit the circumstances. Don’t ask me why.His wife, Andrea, cried when the Lakers became a thing. Always against leaving this part of the country, she knew what a unique opportunity this was. When the Hurleys got home Sunday and started calling friends, family, advisors, players, things became clearer. By all accounts, he was torn 50-50, which means his mind was made up. If you’re 50-50 about coaching the Lakers, then you don’t really want to coach the Lakers.So it really was as simple as Hassan Diarra put it. He wasn’t going to leave. He loves it too much. Hurley can coach in the NBA; it’s very different, but he would adapt, But he has to want to adapt, his heart, as well as his mind, has to be set on it.“We considered it and weighed it and took the trip,” Hurley said, “and factored all the things that mattered to us. As we got to Sunday, we decided, follow your heart, which is here, and your brain, which is here.” 

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