Dan Hurley could be headed to the NBA.
According to ESPN, Los Angeles Lakers point to Hurley as the team’s next coach. UConn has won consecutive NCAA tournaments under Hurley over the past two seasons. The Lakers are looking for a coach to replace Darvin Ham after being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the Denver Nuggets this spring.
Former Duke and NBA player JJ Redick had been seen as the favorite for the Lakers job in recent days. But the Lakers are reportedly preparing to offer Hurley a “huge” contract for him to make it to the NBA.
Hurley, 51, would take charge of a team looking for one more push to the Finals with LeBron James and Anthony Davis. After winning the 2020 NBA Finals, the Lakers lost twice in the first round of the playoffs and missed the postseason in 2022. In Ham’s first season in 2022-23, the Lakers earned the seventh seed and advanced to the Western Conference Finals. before being swept by the Nuggets.
James, who will turn 40 in December, has a player option in his contract for the 2024-25 season that must be exercised by June 29. Assuming he sticks (there’s no sign he won’t), James and Davis will earn a combined $90 million next season.
There is limited financial and roster flexibility for the Lakers beyond James and Davis as well. The team has its 2024 first-round pick at No. 17 after the Pelicans opted to gamble on the Lakers’ roster and take the team’s 2025 first-round pick earlier this summer as part of the deal for Davis . With that pick, the team’s 2029 first-round pick and other players on the roster, Los Angeles could be in the market to upgrade and land a No. 3 player to go along with its star duo.
However, a move for another top-tier player could significantly hurt the team’s depth and force the Lakers to rely on minimum-salary players for a large portion of the roster. Ask the Phoenix Suns how they did this season. The Suns were eliminated in the first round by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first season with Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal all on the same team.
Hurley is 292-163 as a college coach
Hurley has won nearly 300 games in 14 seasons as a head coach at the highest level of men’s college basketball. After two seasons at Wagner, Hurley took over at Rhode Island. He turned the Rams into a 23-win team in his third season after Rhode Island went 8-21 in his first year.
After leading the Rams to back-to-back NCAA tournaments in 2017 and 2018, Hurley was hired at UConn. The Huskies were a disaster when they brought him in. UConn had finished below .500 in each of the last two seasons and had made only one NCAA tournament appearance since winning the national title in 2014.
UConn went 16-17 in Hurley’s first season before winning 19 games as a sophomore before the COVID-19 pandemic prematurely ended the college basketball season. Since then, UConn has reached the NCAA tournament four consecutive times and UConn has become the top program in men’s college basketball.
The Huskies have annihilated their opponents in each of the last two NCAA tournaments. In 2023, UConn beat every team it played in the tournament by at least 13 points en route to a national title over San Diego State.
UConn was even better in 2023-24. The Huskies lost only three games all season and beat their NCAA tournament opponents by even more. UConn won each of its six tournament games by at least 14 points. The Huskies beat Alabama 86-72 in the Final Four before beating Purdue 75-60 in the national title game.
