The Los Angeles Lakers are moving fast in their pursuit of UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley.
Hurley is set to fly out for a meeting with Lakers Vice President and GM Rob Pelinka and owner Jeanie Buss about the historic franchise’s head coaching vacancy on Friday, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski first reported on NBA Countdown Thursday evening. Wojnarowski broke the news of Los Angeles’ plan to offer the reigning back-to-back NCAA champion a “massive, long-term contract” early Thursday morning.
“They’ll start to dig into what a Hurley-Laker partnership would look like. Hurley knows Rob Pelinka, they have spent time together in the past, talked basketball, but this will be his first time meeting with Jeanie Buss,” Wojnarowski said.
“The Lakers would love to get a deal with Dan Hurley wrapped up this weekend. I expect these talks will move quickly, there’s a lot of traction here between Hurley and the Lakers, but they certainly have more talking to do about whether there’s a fit here. Dan Hurley, back at Connecticut, has a chance, obviously, to win a third-straight NCAA championship.”
According to Fox Sports’ John Fanta, Hurley met with the team Thursday morning and confirmed the reports, before holding practice at noon, about five hours after Wojnarowski’s initial report.
“It’s business as usual for now,” he told the players, according to Fanta.
UConn, Fanta reported, has offered the 2024 Naismith Coach of the Year “a lucrative new contract that would make him one of the highest-paid coaches in the country, featuring significant widespread benefits for him.” He received a new six-year, $32.1 million contract after winning the 2023 national championship, worth about $5 million annually.
Hall of Fame Kansas coach Bill Self earned about $9.63 million per year as the highest-paid coach in college basketball during the 2023-24 season, according to a USA Today database. Self was followed by John Calipari at Kentucky ($8.54 million), Michigan State’s Tom Izzo ($6.2 million) and Auburn’s Bruce Pearl ($5.72 million).
