Michael Malone didn’t waste time trying to convince Isaiah Denis to stay at North Carolina. He went straight to Chris Paul.
That detail, Denis said Thursday, tells you plenty about how badly the new UNC coach wanted him back after a freshman season that never got off the ground. Denis entered the transfer portal after a year in Chapel Hill that was derailed before it really began, but Malone made him a priority almost immediately as he started building his first college roster.
Denis came to UNC as a highly regarded guard from Davidson Day, but a finger injury threw his preseason into chaos. He had already dislocated the finger during his senior year of high school, then broke it again just a few weeks into summer workouts with the Tar Heels. Denis said Thursday that losing that developmental stretch made it extremely hard to earn a real foothold in the rotation as a freshman.
The numbers tell the story. He played in only 10 games and averaged 3.4 minutes per appearance.
Even in limited duty, there were flashes of why he was such an intriguing prospect: Denis shot 7-for-14 from the field and 4-for-8 from three-point range. But the sample was too small to build anything substantial.
So when the coaching change came, it would have been easy to see why Denis might have looked elsewhere.
Instead, Malone came in, checked with members of the retained Carolina staff about which players mattered most from the previous roster, and Denis kept surfacing. Malone then learned about Denis’ connection to Paul and used it. Denis said Malone essentially asked Paul to persuade him to pull his name out of the portal.
That Malone was pushing so hard for a player he hadn’t coached, and had only just begun evaluating, says a lot about where Denis fit in Carolina’s plans. The new staff didn’t need a full season of film to decide he was worth keeping around.
Now Denis gets a different kind of opportunity than the one he had a year ago. His freshman season was all starts and stops. This one begins with a clean slate.
That’s one of the more intriguing parts of Carolina’s first season under Malone. The roster has been reshaped, with 11 newcomers joining the team, and Denis is part of the small group that saw last season from the inside. This time, though, he enters preseason practice healthy and ready to compete from Day 1.
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