UConn men’s basketball head coach Dan Hurley will not be leaving the team after he was targeted by the Los Angeles Lakers for their head coaching job, according to ESPN.
Hurley turned down a reported six-year, $70 million offer from the Lakers, who have yet to name a coach after firing Darvin Ham in May. The offer would have made Hurley one of the NBA’s six highest-paid coaches. Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr is the NBA’s current highest-paid coach, making $17.5 million in 2024 after he signed a two-year, $35 million extension in February.
ESPN reported the Lakers had tried to lure Hurley away from UConn with a “massive long-term contract offer.” Last year, Hurley signed a $32.1 million contract that would keep him at UConn until March 2029. Before talks with the Lakers began this spring, the 51-year-old already had an offer from UConn to become one of the highest-paid NCAA coaches, and those talks will continue, sources told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Hurley was named 2024 Naismith College Coach of the Year in April after the Huskies won a second straight national title.
According to the contract that became effective April 2023, Hurley is scheduled to receive $500,000 in retention bonus payments on Nov. 15 each year until 2028.
Had Hurley gone to the Lakers, he (or the Lakers) would have owed UConn $1.875 million in buyout money. That number would have jumped to $7.9 million if he left for another college.
Hurley is now eying his third consecutive national title with the Huskies. A three-peat hasn’t been accomplished in men’s Division I college basketball since John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins won seven in a row from 1967 until 1973.
