The college basketball carousel is always spinning. Whether it's a high-major job opening up mid-season, a blue blood vacancy during the NCAA Tournament, or a job like Michigan opening in the middle of summer due to Dusty May making the jump to the NBA, there is always chaos.
It's rare for a job of North Carolina's caliber to open without an immediate replacement. However, the UNC job was vacant for nearly two weeks after the program made a push to hire away Arizona's Tommy Lloyd in the middle of his Final Four run with the Wildcats. In the end, North Carolina shocked the college basketball world by bringing in longtime NBA coach Michael Malone, who coached the Denver Nuggets to the title in 2023.
In an exclusive interview with CBS Sports' Jon Rothstein on Inside College Basketball Now, Malone revealed what went into the process of taking the UNC job and how a former UNC legend influenced the decision after he turned it down multiple times throughout the process.
"Coach Williams had a lot to do with me taking this job," Malone told Rothstein. "I turned the job down three times. I felt finally at peace about that, and I was going to stay in the NBA and continue my NBA journey. But I had a couple of conversations with Hall of Famer Roy Williams, and I just met him and just got to know him, but I felt like I've known him for years. Coach Williams has that kind of impact on you.
"The thing that kinda resonated with me was how much Coach Williams loves this university, how much Coach Williams loves this program," Malone said. "That passion that he has. He has been unbelievably welcoming to me and my family. He's been around. I told him it's really important to me to have Roy (Williams) be part of this program because I know how much it means."
By North Carolina basketball standards, Malone was about as untraditional a hire the program has ever made. UNC has tended to hire coaches in the "North Carolina family." The most recent example was just a few years ago when North Carolina hired longtime assistant and former player Hubert Davis when Williams retired after the 2020-21 campaign.
The last time UNC hired a coach outside of the "family" was Frank McGuire in 1952.
"The way I'm going to bridge that gap is when I put together my staff; I did it with intent and purpose," Malone said. "Keeping a guy like Sean May, who played here and was a lottery pick and won a national championship on my staff. ... For me, I found a way to keep that connection with the past and the tradition of excellence and winning while also hiring guys like Chuck Martin, a dear close friend of mine for the last 30 years to come in and be my associate head coach."
Malone, who had stints as an NBA head coach with the Nuggets and the Sacramento Kings, has very minimal college coaching experience. He was an assistant coach in the 1990s at Oakland, Providence and Manhattan before making the jump to the NBA ranks in 2001, when he became an assistant coach for the New York Knicks.
Despite the lack of experience coaching at the college level -- while also learning to navigate the ever-changing landscape of college athletics -- Malone assembled one of the top transfer portal hauls in the sport. UNC has the No. 8-ranked transfer portal class in the 247Sports rankings, headlined by the additions of NC State's Matt Able, Utah's Terrence Brown and Virginia Tech's Neoklis Avdalas.
Malone also stressed the importance of high school recruiting and his approach in bringing young talent to Chapel Hill.
"Right now my whole mindset is: This is North Carolina; we are going to get the best players in the country," Malone said. "We are not going to settle; we are not going to take a backseat to anybody. We are going to go out and get the best players, If we feel like we can get a high school player who can come in here and make an impact right away, we are going to get that player. That is my mindset."
