One of the biggest news in the world of sports was the Los Angeles Lakers pursuit of UConn basketball head coach Dan Hurley to take after the job left by Darvin Ham. However, Hurley would decline the Lakers offer and remain with the Huskies in the quest to achieve a third straight championship as he appeared on The Dan Le Batard show to talk about his decision and about a theory people had about him wanting a sweeter deal with the program.
Hurley said there was no “leverage play” with the UConn basketball team
There were some that thought it was very sudden that after hearing Los Angeles was interviewing other candidates like former player JJ Redick, that Hurley was the front runner and wanted a deal done imminently. Some would theorize that it was all a play to be paid more by the UConn basketball team which Hurley called “one of the worst takes I've heard.”
“One of the worst takes I've heard is like, this was a leverage play by me to improve my situation at UConn, Like, I don't need leverage here. We've won back to back national championships, you know, at this place. This was never a leverage situation for me,” Hurley said. “I've had a contract in place here for a couple of weeks and the financial part in terms of salary has been done for a while. There's some other parts like NIL and staff salaries and some different things that I needed, that I want adjusted, that I'm not comfortable with.”
“But the sense or the idea that this was some conspiracy to get me a sweeter deal at UConn is just as lazy and it was truly like a gut wrenching decision for me because Sunday night, going into Monday where I had to kind of a deadline in my mind I was like torn and I didn't know really what I was going to do until I went to bed.”
Hurley talks about his “wild week” in deciding his future
While Hurley's decision was ultimately to go back to the Huskies, he would continue to talk about how he gave real thought to pack his bags to the West coast and coach a franchise like the Lakers. He would go in to depth about what he was thinking which would have been not just coaching the likes of stars such as LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but coaching a franchise that is rich in history especially with people in his position like Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Jerry West, and others.
“Just wild, just kind of late last week, beginning of week, maybe Monday. You start to have conversations with with your agent about what your serious interest level would be in making such a move,” Hurley said when talking about how he felt emotionally when making the decision. “Really the beginning of last week, he started really putting into my mind, was it something I would really put serious consideration into and after thinking about it like earlier in the week, it was something I wanted to explore.
“The opportunity to potentially coach the Lakers and to coach one of the greatest players of all time and to coach another one of the best players in the NBA in AD and to lead such a storied franchise and the walk the sidelines where some of the greatest average do it like Pat Riley and Phil Jackson. I mean, it was something in my mind that I had to, you know, I had to explore and consider and see what it looked like.”
Hurley speaks about potential communication with LeBron James
Le Batard would ask Hurley if there was ever any conversations with James during the process of almost being his head coach, with the 51-year old denying that thought. He would say however that there have been communication before as he tells an eye-opening story when Hurley coached against James in a high school basketball game when the star player was at St. Vincent-St. Mary.
“I did not. We had some communication,” Hurley said. “One of my first games I ever coached in as a high school coach was against LeBron in Delaware. When he was at [St. Vincent-St. Mary]. His team came into that game with a 66 game winning streak and we were, it was my first year as a head coach. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. You know, when the game ended, he had a 67 game winning streak. And you know, so I shared the call with him once and it would have been a thrill to coach him.”
Hurley would talk about if there was a price to leave the Huskies
Another key detail that Hurley mentioned during his interview with Le Batard was that he confirmed that there could have been a price where he would have left the UConn basketball team and coached the Lakers. However, he would go into why staying with the Huskies was the best decision for him.
“To leave there probably is. You know to leave a place at any moment in your life, I think that like to say that it's not a motivating factor, the finances to leave a place is definitely a thing. To stay at a place, I don't think it's ever going to be a thing. Like to stay somewhere like UConn, if there wasn't, it would never have been I think a financial thing. Like again, it wasn't like some like pressure tactic to make me the highest paid college coach, like that was already done. But to leave a place that you feel the way we do and the family connection with my wife, my sons, my mother in law, my brother, my father, you know who like I know how much it means to my dad to go to the Big East tournament and to come to 10 UConn games a year at home and you know sitting court side when I'm coaching against Rick Pitino. To leave all that behind that there probably is a number. I don't know what that is.”
In any sense, now that Hurley is back with the UConn basketball team, they will be on the quest for a third straight national championship after back to back seasons beating the likes of San Diego State and Purdue to get the past two.
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