Michael Malone didn’t arrive at North Carolina through the usual UNC pipeline, and he knows it.
That’s exactly why Roy Williams mattered so much in the process.
In an exclusive interview with CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein on Inside College Basketball Now, the new Tar Heels coach said Williams played a major role in helping him decide to take the job after Malone had already turned it down three times.
“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.”
North Carolina went in a direction it almost never takes. Malone is about as outside-the-box a hire as the program has made, especially for a school that has long leaned on its own circle. Hubert Davis, a former player and longtime assistant, was the most recent example of that approach when he was hired after Roy Williams retired following the 2020-21 season.
Before that, UNC had not hired a coach outside the “family” since Frank McGuire in 1952.
Malone said he plans to help close that gap by how he built his staff.
“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.”
The hire comes with a different kind of background than UNC usually brings in. Malone’s college coaching résumé is short, with assistant stops at Oakland, Providence and Manhattan in the 1990s before he moved into the NBA in 2001 as an assistant with the New York Knicks. He later became an NBA head coach with the Sacramento Kings and the Denver Nuggets, leading Denver to the 2023 title.
Even with that limited college experience and the challenge of adapting to a changing sport, Malone has already put together a strong transfer portal class. North Carolina’s group ranks No. 8 nationally in the 247Sports rankings and is led by NC State’s Matt Able, Utah’s Terrence Brown and Virginia Tech’s Neoklis Avdalas.
And Malone made clear that his plan isn’t to treat Chapel Hill like a place to rebuild slowly. He wants top-end talent, and he wants it from everywhere.
“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.”
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Ven-Allen Lubins move across the Triangle already had plenty of irony attached to it, and now it comes with a fresh layer of tension for North Carolina. After spending one season in Chapel Hill, the big man is set to play for NC State this upcoming season because of a recent NCAA injunction, giving the Wolfpack a frontcourt piece who knows exactly what this rivalry feels like from the other side.
Lubin started all 34 games for NC State last season and averaged 13.6 points and 7.1 rebounds, production the Tar Heels will notice right away if he ends up in the same matchup. North Carolina, meanwhile, has reshaped its roster with recruits Drake Powell and Ian Jackson, plus returning guards Elliot Cadeau and RJ Davis, while the frontcourt has turned over with Caleb Wilson and Henri Veesaar in the mix. [Read more 🡒]
Bill Belichick Faces A UNC Concern Right Before The TCU Opener
North Carolinas preparation for its season opener against TCU in Dublin, Ireland has been shaped by two notable staff absences during training camp. Bill Belichick has already said others have stepped up to help bridge the gap, but the Tar Heels have still had to keep moving through camp while adjusting to a different day-to-day rhythm than the one they expected when August began.
The timing adds an extra layer of uncertainty for a program trying to get organized before the first game of the year. With the opener closing in, the focus now is on how smoothly the Tar Heels can carry the work of camp into game week, even as parts of the staff structure remain in flux. [Read more 🡒]