Why Dusty May left Michigan to go to the Dallas Mavericks

The college basketball world is in total shambles on Monday, June 22. After winning the National Championship two months ago, Michigan men’s basketball head coach Dusty May is reportedly leaving Ann Arbor to become the new head coach of the Dallas Mavericks.

May has been one of the fastest risers to an NBA job in recent history, going from coaching Florida Atlantic two years ago to winning at Michigan, and now leaving college to jump to the pros.

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There is no denying success follows May wherever he goes, and he has received interest from every program in the country the last few years given what he has done at FAU and Michigan. He pulled off one of the great Cinderella stories in NCAA Tournament history with a 2023 Final Four run at FAU, taking a program that had no high school recruits when he arrived and turned them into a contending program. He then turned Michigan around after it went 8-24 the season prior, making the Sweet 16 in May’s first season and following that up with the program’s first national title since 1989.

Now, May is the first college coach to bolt immediately after cutting down the nets since Kansas’ Larry Brown in 1988. As stunned as we all are, there is a very good reason why May is leaving Michigan. College sports are changing every day, and while Congress can pass all of the legislation it wants to, it is not going to fix anything in the short term. College sports are becoming less recognizable, and for coaches like May that got into the business because of the love they had for the pre-existing structure, there comes a point where you can’t handle more instability.

“I did ask Dusty if he would leave for the NBA, if he could see himself leaving college basketball in the coming years, he did say yes at that point,” CBS Sports College Basketball Insider Matt Norlander said on Monday morning. “Did we think he would get to the point where he would be taking an NBA job in 2026? No. But I did think that if he was going to be able…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/why-dusty-may-left-michigan-180000806.html

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Publish date : 2026-06-22 18:00:00

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