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DENVER, COLORADO - JUNE 12: Head coach Michael Malone of the Denver Nuggets speaks with media after a 94-89 victory against the Miami Heat in Game Five of the 2023 NBA Finals to win the NBA Championship at Ball Arena on June 12, 2023 in Denver, Colorado. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images)
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North Carolina wanted a “superstar” as its next coach.
And they appear to have found one in former NBA championship coach Michael Malone.
Malone replaces Hubert Davis, who was fired last month after a second straight NCAA Tournament first-round exit.
“Mike will bring all the necessary skills that he has developed over the years to put UNC at track to compete for a national championship,” said legendary former Seton Hal Prep coach Bob Farrell, who coached Malone in high school. “People don’t realize that Michael saw [Nikola] Jokic's potential years before anyone else.”
The news was first reported by ESPN.
Malone, 54, is a Queens, N.Y. native and the son of late former NBA coach Brendan Malone. He has a career record of 904-510 as an NBA head coach with the Denver Nuggets and Sacramento Kings.
Malone has never been a college head coach and last coached in college with Manhattan from 1999-2001.
He spent this past season as an ESPN analyst.
Malone’s family, originally from Queens, N.Y., moved to West Orange, N.J., from Rhode Island in 1986 after his father was given a job as a Knicks assistant coach under Hubie Brown. The younger Malone joined a Seton Hall Prep team that was coming off a state championship, and, with unrealistic expectations about his abilities, believed he should have “been playing more or featured more.”
Eventually, longtime Seton Hall Prep coach Bob Farrell pulled the angry young point guard aside and told him, “Malone, you’re shaking the foundations of Seton Hall Prep.”
“We laugh at that now, but back then I’m sure it was not nearly as funny for him,” Malone told me for NJ.com in 2024. “But I have so much respect for Coach Farrell, not just the coach he was, but how he treated us players and how he was disciplined. He pushed me to go from being a young immature kind of a punk to growing up and realizing as a leader of a team, I’ve got to be able to set the tone. And it was very impactful.”
Michael always looked up to his father, who died in 2023 — a driving force behind the Detroit Pistons “Bad Boys” defenses in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. Michael recalls being in the car on recruiting trips when Brendan was a college coach recruiting legendary New York City guards like Dwayne “The Pearl” Washington at Boys and Girls High School, Mark Jackson at Bishop Loughlin and Kenny Smith at Archbishop Molloy.
“I was going to those games with my father, and I knew this was what I wanted to do,” Malone said. “We shared that passion.”
This article was originally published on Forbes.com
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