UNC’s meh basketball hire: Being a blue blood isn’t what it used to be | Opinion

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UNC fans should hope that the Tar Heels pick for new men’s basketball coach — former Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone — is a better strategist than the people who are about to hire him.

Malone has solid coaching credentials, but he’s not the top-tier coach that UNC administrators were seeking after they fired five-year head coach Hubert Davis.

University of Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd — who guided his team to this year’s Final Four — declined an invitation to move to Chapel Hill. It’s likely other prominent coaches didn’t want the job.

The university then found itself without a head coach just as the transfer portal is set to open on Tuesday. Top talent wouldn’t transfer to UNC without knowing who the coach is. So quick, hire Malone.

We wish Malone all the best in the Carolina blue pressure cooker, but the pick raises anew questions about why Davis was fired. Davis won 69 percent of his games. This season, his team set a record by going unbeaten at home, including a court-storming win over Duke. Moreover, he is part of the Carolina family, having played at UNC and having served as an assistant under Roy Williams.

Yes, Davis’ team blew a 19-point lead in a first-round NCAA loss to Virginia Commonwealth University, but those who backed firing Davis said it wasn’t about the one loss. It was Davis’ failure to win consistently against top-level opponents. He was said to be performing below the UNC standard.

But that complaint is based on the Tar Heels’ dominance under Hall of Fame coaches Williams and Dean Smith. It’s a new world now, and the consistency of blue blood programs has been diluted by the arrival of greenback incentives.

With players getting paid through name, image and likeness deals and players transferring frequently among schools, no program can assume that its historic prestige will make it a winner. That’s true at other college blue bloods (hello, Kentucky) and it’s certainly true in college football, where your defending national champion, Indiana, used to be a basketball school.

UNC also faced some additional challenges. Surely, any coaches considering the school might wonder exactly who they are reporting to, given that the messy hiring of football coach Bill Belichick was choreographed by the Board of Trustees, not Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham. That top-down approach also has led to tension surrounding diversity and inclusiveness on campus and questions about exactly who is running things — the administration or Republican lawmakers in Raleigh.

Add it all up, and coaches like Lloyd perhaps realized that maybe legacy programs like UNC don’t bring quite the advantages they once did.

UNC leaders acted on that outdated assumption. As a result, they lowered what was left of the Carolina standard by firing one of their own and creating a sense of uncertainty about what the Tar Heel basketball program represents and where it’s going.

Good luck to Coach Malone. He’s taking over amid confusion and an air of desperation. Unless he can dispel that atmosphere by winning at a high level during a turbulent time in college basketball — not to mention Chapel Hill — it could become the new Carolina standard.

This story was originally published April 6, 2026 at 5:46 PM.