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“They had an NFL champ hired as the coach and Duke beat Carolina in football this year … there’s time for adjustments.”
Bill Belichick AP Photo/Adrian Kraus
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On Monday, University of North Carolina announced that it hired former Nuggets coach Michael Malone to replace Hubert Davis as the Tar Heels’ men’s basketball coach.
Malone spent a decade coaching the Nuggets, his second stop as an NBA coach. Three years ago, in 2023, Malone coached against Joe Mazzulla in the NBA All-Star game before guiding the Nuggets to their first championship.
Now, he’s employed by the same school that brought Bill Belichick on as head football coach.
During a recent appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was asked for his reaction to the news that UNC had hired Malone.
“They had an NFL champ hired as the coach and Duke beat Carolina in football this year,” Krzyzewski said. “That doesn’t mean Coach Belichick isn’t a great coach. There’s time for adjustments. It takes longer if you ever get adjusted coming from the pros to college.”
As the Tar Heels’ regression last year under Belichick showed, professional accolades do not guarantee success at the college level. UNC fired Mack Brown after he finished 6-7 in 2024. The Tar Heels went 4-8 in Belichick’s first season.
Malone spent seven years as an assistant college basketball coach during the mid and late 90’s before making the jump to the NBA in 2001. His three stops were Oakland, Providence, and Manhattan.
Much has changed since Malone last coached college basketball, and he, like Belichick, had never been a head coach at the college level before UNC hired him.
“Mike is a terrific coach and a terrific guy,” Krzyzewski said. “There’s a learning curve. If that is true, whatever the reasoning is, maybe they’re changing – they have two pro coaches coaching in college – the infrastructure of their athletic department. Is it now going to be more of a pro organization?”
With players now able to earn compensation for their name, image, and likeness and coaches in the major conferences earning massive salaries already, Krzyzewski said he’s not against schools modeling their programs after the pros.
Belichick has publicly said that he aspires to make the experience at UNC as close to the NFL as possible, even going as far to call his program the 33rd NFL team.
Now, with Malone in the mix, the school has both a Super Bowl champion and an NBA champion coaching their respective sports at the school.
“I think everybody should be doing that,” Krzyzewski said of the pro approach. “The fact that he knows how to do that and so does coach Belichick, maybe that’s a sign that they’re moving in that direction organizationally.”
Khari A. Thompson
Khari Thompson covers professional sports for Boston.com. Before joining the team in 2022, Khari covered college football for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.
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