Michael Malone is a left-field hire for UNC. I think it will turn out all right

UNC just made a thoroughly unorthodox hire as its new head basketball coach.

Michael Malone isn’t just from outside the UNC basketball family, he’s from outside the entire college basketball family. Malone is like one of those distant relatives you might find on Ancestry, the fourth cousin you’ve never seen who lives somewhere out West.

But yes, Michael Malone will soon be announced as the new UNC head basketball coach, The News & Observer has confirmed. He’s an NBA guy through and through, winning an NBA championship in Denver in 2023 and working as a head coach in the league for 12 years before getting fired in a move that shocked the league.

There’s no fat buyout needed for this one as there would have been for Tommy Lloyd or Dusty May. Malone, 54, has been out of the coaching game this season, although he would have gotten a new NBA head job this summer.

Instead, after last being in college basketball in 2001 as an assistant at Manhattan, he joins the weird world of college hoops — which is basically just a strange version of pro basketball at this point. As with the hiring of Bill Belichick — OK, maybe not the best example — the Tar Heels have turned to the pro ranks to try to fix a program that isn’t getting enough done on the collegiate level.

I never was a fan of the Belichick hire. But I like this one.

UNC certainly didn’t need to stay within the Carolina blue pipeline, which offered no obvious choice after the Tar Heels fired Hubert Davis following the team’s first-round exit in the NCAA Tournament. UNC lost a 19-point second-half lead in that one, and Davis ultimately didn’t survive that collapse.

This isn’t Belichick Part II. It will work out better than that. Malone is 19 years younger and surely will be more willing to surround himself with actual college basketball experts, instead of trying to turn UNC into the NBA’s 31st franchise.

UNC fans will find his honesty refreshing. Malone has never been afraid to challenge players, and he can be explosive on the sideline, but he also knows how to coach superstars. The centerpiece of his 2023 NBA championship with the Nuggets was Nikola Jokic, arguably the best basketball player in the world. Malone had him for 10 seasons. Malone also was an assistant coach with Cleveland when the star player was LeBron James and an assistant with Golden State when Steph Curry was just turning into Steph Curry. He coaches his stars hard, too, and believes that the best ones always want to be better.

Malone is well aware he has no direct connection to Chapel Hill as a player or a coach.

“No one knows me here, which is great,” he joked in October while making an appearance on the “Carolina Insider” podcast.

Malone was on that podcast because he has a daughter who currently goes to UNC. Bridget Malone plays for the UNC volleyball team, and Malone has been on campus numerous times before to watch her. He also has attended multiple UNC basketball practices, including several coached by Davis.

The two became friends as Malone kept visiting campus. Davis even had Malone speak to the UNC basketball team in the 2025-26 preseason, Malone said on that same podcast (he also noted that he was rooting like “hell” for Davis to succeed).

“I’ve always been a Carolina fan,” Malone said then. “Now I’m ‘Go Heels’ for everything.”

One thing Malone should be good at: attracting international prospects. He has connections there, in part because he coached Jokic for 10 years in the NBA.

Explaining Malone’s firing

Why is Malone available?

Because there was a surprise falling out in Denver almost exactly one year ago. With three games left in the regular season, the Nuggets were about to make the postseason for a seventh consecutive year. Then Josh Kroenke, the vice chairman of the organization that owns the Nuggets, fired Malone and also announced that the current general manager Calvin Booth also wasn’t going to have his contract renewed.

Kroenke said “it is with no pleasure” that he made the changes (The Nuggets have remained almost exactly the same since Malone’s departure — no better, no worse).

The Athletic reported that Booth and Malone had a strained relationship and that Malone’s fiery nature could sometimes wear on his players. As The Athletic wrote at the time: “Malone’s intensity is legendary in league circles, which can inspire or demoralize his team depending on the day.”

Oh no, you say. Wasn’t Matt Doherty legendarily intense, too? Sure he was. So was Roy Williams.

Malone has now been the subject of two stunning coaching decisions the past two Aprils — one in which he was fired, and one in which he was hired.

He had predicted that he would be coaching again in that October podcast.

“Next year, in my heart, in my soul, I’m a coach,” Malone said. “I’m a teacher. I would love to get back to coaching again, as long as it’s the right opportunity with the right people.”

Who knew that the right people turned out to be right around the corner? I think this is going to turn out all right.

This story was originally published April 6, 2026 at 5:09 PM.

Scott Fowler

The Charlotte Observer

704-358-5136

Columnist Scott Fowler has written for The Charlotte Observer since 1994 and has earned 26 APSE awards for his sportswriting. He hosted The Observer’s podcast “Carruth,” which Sports Illustrated once named “Podcast of the Year.” Fowler also conceived and hosted the online series and podcast “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” which featured 1-on-1 interviews with NC and SC sports icons and was turned into a book. He occasionally writes about non-sports subjects, such as the 5-part series “9/11/74,” which chronicled the forgotten plane crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 in Charlotte on Sept. 11, 1974. Support my work with a digital subscription