A new era of Carolina basketball officially began on Tuesday evening.
The Tar Heels introduced new head coach Michael Malone in the Smith Center, welcoming him to the Carolina Basketball Family as the 21st head coach in program history but just the sixth in the last 65 years (since 1961).
Malone was an NBA head coach for 12 seasons, including 10 (2015-25) with the Denver Nuggets. He has more wins than any head coach in Denver history, and he led the Nuggets to the 2023 NBA championship. He won 510 total games as an NBA head coach, including a stint in Sacramento prior to his time in Denver. He led the Nuggets to six playoff appearances, won 44 postseason games (the most in club history) and coached three-time NBA Most Valuable Player Nikola Jokić, among several other professional stars.
“I’m really thankful for this opportunity, I do not take it lightly,” Malone said. “People keep asking me, ‘Coach, why would you leave a chance of coaching in the NBA again? You’re an NBA coach; you won a championship in Denver in 2023.’ It wasn’t an easy decision, but what I kept thinking about was I have a chance to be a part of something special, the history and tradition, to be a part of something much bigger than myself.”
Malone is Carolina’s first head coaching hire since Frank McGuire in 1952 who had not either played or served as an assistant coach with the Tar Heels prior to take the program’s reins. One of his top priorities upon arriving in Chapel Hill was to meet with members of the current Tar Heel team, many of whom were on hand for Tuesday’s festivities.
Eager to welcome him into the Carolina Family, a litany of former players such as Tyler Hansbrough, Deon Thompson, Marcus Ginyard and Shammond Williams also met and embraced him as the new head coach on Tuesday afternoon. Former coaches including Roy Williams, Eddie Fogler and Dave Hanners were on hand at the press conference, as well as football coach Bill Belichick, volleyball head coach Mike Schall and Malone’s daughter, Bridget, a Carolina freshman on the volleyball team.
“I am an outsider coming into a really intimate family,” Malone said. “I have to balance the delicate balance of being true to the past and honoring tradition while also having my eyes on the future. The game is always changing. So if you see us doing things a little bit differently, it’s okay, embrace that. I’m going to use people like Coach Williams, Coach Eddie Fogler, Pat Sullivan, Sean May, all the guys that are here, learn from them and push forward.”
“You’re talking about young men coming into a family program and having that family atmosphere, and that’s something you can talk about, but it’s really something you have to feel and build every single day. That’s why I wanted to start off meeting with the players today for them to hear from me, to get a feel for me.”
Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham, Executive Associate Athletic Director Steve Newmark and Chancellor Lee Roberts flanked Malone at the press conference. The quartet sat at a table on the Smith Center court with a symbolic, direct view of the program’s seven national championship banners hanging from the rafters.
“Larry Brown is the only coach that has won a national championship and won an NBA championship,” Cunningham said to Malone before joking, “You’ve won an NBA championship already, and I’ve asked our staff to start moving those banners so that we can hang another. I don’t want to put any pressure on your, but they’re starting to move them tomorrow.”
In his opening statement, Newmark described his initial conversation with Malone, one that left him impressed.
“We talked for about an hour, and what stood out right away is that he’s a basketball encyclopedia,” the incoming AD said. “He went through almost every player on our current roster, their strengths, weaknesses. He also probably listed every UNC alum that had ever come from the New York City pipeline, starting, I think, with Frank McGuire.”
Malone had a whirlwind day on Tuesday, arriving in Chapel Hill in the early afternoon after an early-morning flight departure from Denver. He met with UNC administrators, the current team and staff, posed for photos and sat for video and podcast interviews — all before the press conference even began. Afterward, he met with donors and university and athletic department leadership. With the transfer portal opening earlier in the day on Tuesday, the next few days should also be a cyclone of activity.
“I’m really excited to get to work. We’ve got a lot of things going on with the transfer portal, talking to my players, getting out on the recruiting trail, hiring a staff, finding a place to live, all those things.”
Malone finished in the top five in NBA Coach-of-the-Year voting twice, finishing third in 2019 and fifth in 2023. He coached in the 2009 and 2023 NBA All-Star Games.
“My only goal is to get better every day. If you do that every single day, you put yourself in a position to have that success. I don’t want to just have success…you talk about sustained success, excellence, doing it year in and year out. That’s what I want to bring to this table.
“Basketball is basketball, and players, not only do they want to be coached, but they also want to know that you care about them. We used to say in the NBA players don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care, and I believe that and buy into that.”
