Hurley's a hot candidate, if he keeps his cool

The Lakers are reportedly going big, in pursuit of the 2-time NCAA championship coach

Dan Hurley

A major league manager said this on Wednesday night:“I can’t tell you how proud I am of these guys. These guys are playing good baseball and they are giving us everything they've got and that’s what I ask them to do every day.”

Who was it?

(A) John McGraw.

(B) Billy Martin.

( C) Dick Williams

(D) None of the above.

The answer is obviously (D) since the other gentlemen are no longer with us. You can tell because of that rumbling sound underground, when they realized what was said by Pedro Grifol, the manager of the Chicago White Sox, who had just finished losing their 13th consecutive game, tying a 100-year-old franchise record. Their record at the time was 15-47.

It’s an illustration of the excessive use of quotes in sports stories. About 60 percent of them are like this one. Empty, silly, vacuous and unnecessary. Grifol would have made more sense quoting dialogue from “The Blues Brothers.”

It’s also an illustration of the ultra-sensitivity that plagues us today, particularly in a sporting landscape where players make yearly salaries that equal the value of their franchises 40 years ago. Everyone is trying, everyone is pulling together, everyone likes each other, and, if you lose, get ‘em next time. It’s like they’ve replaced clubhouse beer with juice boxes.

This is a roundabout way of getting to Dan Hurley, who reportedly has been offered $100 million to coach the Lakers. He always would have been the leading candidate if anyone had possessed the audacity to think of him. Hurley is coming off back-to-back NCAA championships at Connecticut, he’s still only 51, and he has shown his NBA ambitions by asking for, and getting, a marked-down buyout if he leaves UConn for the pros instead of another college.

Immediately there was the knee-jerk reminder that college coaches are ground into unidentifiable hair and flesh by the NBA. Some have, no doubt. When former Stanford coach Mike Montgomery was fired by Golden State, he came back for the Cal job and was asked what he had missed about the college game. “Eye contact,” he said.

But pro-bred coaches get fired, too. Ask Frank Vogel, who won an NBA title with the Lakers in 2020, lost his job two years ago, got the Phoenix job this year and is on the street now. Ask Doc Rivers, who has appeared in more cities than Anthony Bourdain.

Chuck Daly, Bill Fitch, Paul Westhead, Gregg Popovich, and Dick Motta all coached in college. All won NBA championships. Fred Schaus was a college coach and went to four NBA finals. Disqualifying Hurley on that basis is like saying you shouldn’t sign Luka Doncic because the NBA was relatively untouched by Slovenians.

No, the one doubt about Hurley is whether he can develop an inner Grifol. Left alone at UConn, Hurley is known for sideline explosions that don’t come close to the magnitude that he detonates in practice. His wife Andrea periodically tells him his behavior is “embarrassing,” and CBS’ Bill Raftery said Hurley needed to moderate his hectoring of the officials even as the Huskies rolled through the tournament.

NBA coaches don’t call out players. Not unless they have the cachet and control of Popovich or Steve Kerr. The story goes that Vogel went on a wall-rattling rant near the end of the season, and the Suns veterans found it very entertaining and totally ineffective. NBA players need to be nudged, massaged, course-corrected. But they do respect expertise and long hours. And they pay attention when a club gives a coach six, seven or eight years for point-guard money.

Hurley has all the leverage here. There are easier gigs than the Lakers, who hope to bring back free agent LeBron James to team with Anthony Davis, but generally lack the ingredients to move up sharply in the Western Conference. Although James has praised Hurley’s technical expertise, he will expect the club to acquire Bronny James somehow, and one can imagine the conversations if Bronny never takes off his warmups. The Lakers would be ahead of the game if James signs somewhere else, so they can start working on their new-team smell. It’s hard to see Hurley leaving Connecticut without the promise that he’ll wield the final gavel on personnel decisions. Whether he can work with Jeanie Buss and Rob Pelinka without peeling paint off the walls is another variable.

Of course, Hurley could putter along for a couple of years, get fired because of losing or locker room strife, and return to the colleges with a full vault and the same championship resume. By then the colleges might have figured out their new terrain. Maybe they’ll have a salary cap by then, or clearly-marked calendars for transfer portaling. Hurley has deftly handled the portal and combined it with conventional recruiting, but he obviously sees the pros as an escape.

Now that the money figures are out, Lakers’ fans would be crestfallen if the negotiation gets derailed and the club has to go back to J.J. Redick, whom they were supposed to have hired by now. They’ll be rebellious if the Lakers hire anybody else. If Redick does get the job he might have some ‘splaining to do. Marc Stein of The Stein Line newsletter on Substack notes that Redick, as a media member, did not put Davis on either his first or second All-Defense team. Davis feels he should have been Defensive Player of the Year. He did make first team.

Besides, Redick never has coached. He’s been a pensive and provocative voice, both on podcasts and on ABC/ESPN. The model is Kerr, who also never coached before he began winning titles at Golden State, but Kerr is a singular communicator who also found himself coaching Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.

Aside from the In Season Tournament and James’ capture of the alltime scoring lead, the Lakers were unforgivably boring last season, in a city that has no patience for that. Dan Hurley is an inspired choice no matter what happens. Just don’t expect him to borrow Pedro Grifol’s old college try. He never used it in college.