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Dusty May’s One Shining Moment didn’t come with the sorts of feelings you’d expect after fulfilling a life-long dream.
After his Michigan men’s basketball team beat UConn back in early April to claim the program’s first national title in 37 years, May wasn’t overwhelmed by elation or joy when he stood at the apex of his profession. It was something much more hollow.
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“I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’d heard where you climb the ladder and you say, ‘Is this really it?’ And it was worse,” May said in April to CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander. “It was less than ‘it.’”
REQUIRED READING: Days before leaving, Dusty May sounded all-in at Michigan. Then, poof!
May was speaking about the finality of a season and the bittersweet feelings that come when a championship signals the end of a journey for a team he described as “one of the most special groups of humans you’ll ever be around.”
More than two months later, though, it’s difficult not to view those comments under a different light.
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On Monday, May left behind the program he had just guided to a title to take over as Dallas Mavericks coach.
While the move stunned much of the sport, if only because of the timing, it makes sense from a purely transactional standpoint.
May’s one of the brightest coaching stars at any level of the sport, someone who took Florida Atlantic to a Final Four and helped Michigan win a national championship two years after he inherited a program coming off an 8-24 season.
He’ll arrive in Dallas with a franchise pillar already in place in Cooper Flagg, the 19-year-old phenom who averaged 21 points per game as a rookie and has the potential to be one of the NBA’s best players in the not-so-distant future. Unlike many college coaches who have made the jump to the pros, May seems well-equipped for the move thanks to his tactical acumen, player development chops and, perhaps most importantly, even-keeled temperament.
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The NBA’s gain, though, is college basketball’s loss. And in a sport prone to treating every move as a referendum on the health of the enterprise, it has raised some…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/dusty-mays-move-nba-isnt-172831424.html
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Publish date : 2026-06-23 17:28:00
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