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Tom Petrini: Mitch Johnson on getting to know Steph Castle: "A lot of times I think as coaches we ignorantly get a player and then it's like their book starts and there's so much history that you can learn about a player and a person before they get to you, and so when you look back at his time, whether it's being coached by Coach Hurley, whether that's how he's raised in his household by his mother and father, whether that's him playing off the ball and sacrificing maybe some of the on-ball opportunities that he's more than capable of at Connecticut to join a national championship team to then win another national championship, a McDonald's All-American in high school that played with the basketball. When you start peeling back the layers, the toughness is there, the discipline and the structure is there, the understanding the value of a role is there, and it's showed itself in so many different ways, and so then once you get that young man who, because you drafted him, and as a player, as a person, you then get to build your own rapport with them, but it is really helpful to understand what people and players go through before they get to you, because if you take the time to understand that, and them, I do think it sets you up to have a successful onboarding process, and kind of rhythm as you get to know them early on, and I give a lot of credit to Brian Wright and his staff for that."
Dan Hurley has been a Knicks fan all his life. Favorite player: Bernard King. But this isn’t about a Jersey City guy and a love affair with the darlings of Madison Square Garden. This is about UConn basketball family, now. The Knicks may be in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999, may be going for their first championship since 1973, but they’d have to beat Stephon Castle to do it. “No, I’m not torn,” Hurley said told The Courant on Tuesday morning. “I mean, I love the Knicks. They have always been my favorite NBA team. I’m obviously going with … I’m rolling with Steph, there’s no question about that.”
“One of the more appealing Finals we’ve seen,” Hurley said. “You’ve got the Knicks and the history of the Knicks, a more veteran group, versus this young and talented, ahead-of-schedule Spurs team.”
Dan Hurley was linked to the vacant North Carolina job by ESPN on Saturday, but the UConn coach shut down those rumors while leaving the door open for the NBA “down the line.” “I’m the UConn coach until the end, and maybe the NBA someday down the line. But yeah, I’m the UConn coach," Hurley told Jeff Goodman of The Field of 68 and myself here at the Final Four. Hurley will lead UConn into the national championship game here Monday night against Michigan as the Huskies bid for their third national title in four years.
Dan Hurley was linked to the vacant North Carolina job by ESPN on Saturday, but the UConn coach shut down those rumors while leaving the door open for the NBA “down the line.” “I’m the UConn coach until the end, and maybe the NBA someday down the line. But yeah, I’m the UConn coach," Hurley told Jeff Goodman of The Field of 68 and myself here at the Final Four.
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The mere mention of the large, gray, trunked mammoth that wandered into the banquet room was enough for Dan Hurley to cringe. Addressed more directly, he just waved it off. “Not another summer of that,” he said, as the dais was breaking up. That should be enough to calm any fears that Hurley would entertain the possibility of leaving UConn and coaching the Knicks, who fired coach Tom Thibodeau a few hours before Hurley arrived at the Aqua Turf Club, where his wife, Andrea, received the St. Clare Award at the Franciscan Sports Banquet in recognition of her community service.
How close were you to taking that Lakers job? Dan Hurley: We went back and forth. I mean there were there were obviously a lot of positives and the challenge was exciting so there were definitely times where you thought you were going.
It appears that time has arrived, with NJ Advance Media’s Adam Zagoria reporting that Hurley is set to release a “tell-all book” this fall. Taking to X, the 52-year-old head coach made his own announcement regarding the book, which will be titled Never Stop: Life, Leadership and What it Takes to Be Great and written in the first-person alongside author Ian O’Connor. “I’ve confronted a lot of adversity on my life’s journey and I’m proud to share those stories–along with my leadership philosophies in building championship teams at UConn–in my book ‘Never Stop,'” Hurley wrote. “I’m writing this to help people overcome & succeed.”
From when Redick first talked about the position with Pelinka during the NBA draft combine in May, to officially becoming a Lakers candidate along with New Orleans assistant James Borrego and UConn coach Dan Hurley, several people close to Redick told him it would be a bad idea to take it, sources told ESPN.
With so many similarities with Dan Hurley (not the least of which, a couple of New York-area Irish kids who were former Big East point guards), Billy Donovan was a perfect sounding board for Hurley while he considered the NBA last spring. "We didn't get into the Lakers' situation or their personnel," recalled Donovan, who is entering his fifth season as Chicago Bulls' head coach. "I think Danny needed to go through whatever he went through. He was going to be able to find out the inner workings of the Lakers. I don't know anything about that ... Danny had to go through that on his own."
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Rather, Donovan and Hurley's conversations were more about NBA life in general: the 82-game schedule, the work flow that is totally different from college. "It's like backwards, if that makes any sense," Donovan noted.
"Those were the conversations that Danny and I had, that kind of stuff," Donovan reported. "The X's and O's and the basketball stuff, I think most coaches enjoy that part of it. And the game's different than college is. The rules are different, you've got to pick up on those things. But it was more like, 'what's a year like, what's a week like, what's training camp like?'"
During an interview on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, Hurley finally gave an extensive explanation for why he eschewed one of the NBA's premier jobs to return to college basketball and chase a third straight NCAA title with the Huskies. At the heart of it, Hurley wanted to continue impacting the lives of his players, something he didn't feel like NBA coaches can do. Bensinger asked Hurley if he still wanted to coach in the NBA eventually, and the 51-year-old said he wasn't sure. "I don't know. I don't know about that. If you're not going to take the Lakers job, then what job are you going to take," he said.