{"id":2005337,"date":"2026-06-22T22:38:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T19:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2005337"},"modified":"2026-06-22T22:38:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T19:38:47","slug":"dusty-mays-move-to-the-nba-shocked-college-hoops-but-there-were-signs-it-shouldnt-have","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2005337","title":{"rendered":"Dusty May\u2019s move to the NBA shocked college hoops, but there were signs it shouldn\u2019t have"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the fall after Dusty May took Florida Atlantic on a shocking run to the Final Four in 2023, the Atlanta Hawks invited him to attend their training camp. When he returned to FAU, he told his staff he thought he could coach at that level.<\/p>\n

For those who know May best, the NBA is where they thought he would always land. In those FAU days, one of his staffers called him \u201cDusty May Stevens,\u201d referencing the former Butler coach and current Boston Celtics executive, whose practices May used to visit.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSimilar to Brad, the way he thinks (about) the game is ahead of everyone else,\u201d a source close to May said.<\/p>\n

On Monday, May followed in Stevens\u2019 footsteps, leaving Michigan to become the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The timing sent shockwaves through the college basketball universe, because May just won a national title and was only two seasons in at Michigan. Not since Larry Brown left for the San Antonio Spurs in 1988 has a coach won a national title and left to coach another team the next year, and Brown\u2019s Kansas program was going on probation that next year. May rebuilt a top-five roster this spring and would have had a chance to repeat.<\/p>\n

May, 49, was also as good as it gets at navigating the new age of college basketball \u2014 from recruiting the transfer portal to fundraising and coaching what feels like a new team every year \u2014 but according to sources close to him, granted anonymity for their candor, that grind wore on him this past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the lack of structure in college basketball\/athletics was beginning to frustrate him \u2014 no guardrails and not having any visible solutions in the near future,\u201d one of the sources said. \u201cThis thing that we have going on in college basketball, you\u2019re going to keep losing these dudes like that, man. The really good ones are going to keep going because it beats you down. \u2026 You\u2019re fundraising or meeting with agents or traveling, it\u2019s hard for somebody like him who loves ball to be consumed with all the other stuff all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Recently, May referenced a sign that hung in Bob Knight\u2019s office that read something like, \u201cjust coach your team.\u201d The lesson May learned as a student manager for Knight\u2019s Indiana program was to worry about the things that impacted winning and impacted his players and their growth and development. Everything else had to be put on the back burner.<\/p>\n

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That had proven difficult, especially after winning a national title. I followed May out of Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on the night he won the championship, and he spent most of the walk back responding to the 1,001 unread messages on his phone, looking for messages from recruits. Since that night, he has been on the road more than ever, spending two or three days in a row in Ann Arbor between trips across the country for recruiting or fundraising.<\/p>\n

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What You Should Read Next<\/div>\n
\n \"Inside<\/p>\n
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\n Inside Dusty May\u2019s short walk home from a long journey to the March Madness mountaintop\n <\/div>\n
\n May rarely rides the bus after games, instead choosing to get some exercise, and he wasn\u2019t breaking the habit on the night he won a title.\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u201cYou could kind of see the frustration and fatigue in the last year,\u201d a source said. \u201cYou\u2019ve been around him. He\u2019s always on the go. Like he\u2019s never tired. He\u2019s always moving. \u2026 It\u2019s just been nonstop where you reach the pinnacle and you don\u2019t even get a chance to really enjoy any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What May loves about coaching is the basketball and the relationships.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s always going to be at the core for him,\u201d another source said. \u201cHe wants to coach ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Our @GoodmanHoops<\/a> talked with Dusty May just 4 days ago and asked him if he’s frustrated with the college basketball landscape:<\/p>\n

“The actual games and profession is sustainable, but it’s just a low quality of life for most of the people involved because of the uncertainty and\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/9pIGMTL2ly<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 The Field of 68 (@TheFieldOf68) June 22, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

May has always broken up his workday by studying other teams, something he called \u201crecess.\u201d This spring, he was doing what he called a season autopsy, rewatching every one of Michigan\u2019s games in reverse, trying to get through at least one a day.<\/p>\n

May is happiest when he\u2019s nerding out on basketball. Last month, I moderated a virtual coaching clinic with May. He got more excited talking about the nitty-gritty details of the game and how he learns more than anything else, giving the example of how he ended up using 6-foot-11 Danny Wolf as a ball handler in a 4-5 pick-and-roll during his first season at Michigan. It happened by accident in practice when the Wolverines tried to set up a baseline out-of-bounds play where Wolf caught the ball at the elbow and center Vlad Goldin set a ball screen. Wolf got knocked off his set and pushed out to beyond the 3-point line, and he set the ball screen up like a 5-foot-9 point guard.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like an epiphany moment,\u201d May said.<\/p>\n

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May loves the puzzle and proved able to adapt when he made the move from FAU to Michigan. At FAU, he built his program by usually playing four guards. This past season at Michigan, he started three big men. His plan going into the year was to run an offense similar to Gonzaga and Arizona\u2019s, a system famous in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had intentions of playing in that shape,\u201d May said during the clinic. \u201cAnd because of the creativity of our players and because we were able to figure some things out on the fly, we didn\u2019t end up doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

That made Michigan more unpredictable. That led to a national title.<\/p>\n

In college, that\u2019s only a part of the job. In the NBA, that\u2019s most of the job.<\/p>\n

Another telling moment came this spring when May hired international coach Mody Maor to his staff<\/a>. Maor, who was a head coach in Japan this past year, told May that he loved helping players improve and was looking forward to getting back to working more one-on-one with them as an assistant. That resonated with May because he felt like he was getting less and less time to do that at Michigan due to all of the demands of the modern college basketball head coach.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why May was likely bound for the NBA if he got the opportunity. And May has had a few years to think this through. His name started to surface in NBA circles after the FAU Final Four run.<\/p>\n

The last time I talked to May was on June 4. He had just gone through customs in Miami, where he was spending a few days visiting the Heat. His son, Jack May, works in the video room there. May has visited regularly the past few years and is friends with Heat coach Erik Spoelstra.<\/p>\n

Those trips were his recess. Now he gets to live that life.<\/p>\n

And he gets to live it with a franchise that has one of the best young players in the NBA in Cooper Flagg, with a team president in Masai Ujiri who has built a champion before (with the Toronto Raptors) and has an eye for identifying talent.<\/p>\n

After May left Miami, he said he was hitting the road that next Tuesday to start recruiting.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack at it,\u201d he said then.<\/p>\n

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At that point, he was still committed to coaching Michigan. But in recent weeks, the NBA interest picked up, and over the weekend, when this opportunity with this star became a real possibility, May decided to keep following the path of Stevens.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s proven himself at the college level. Now it\u2019s time to see if he can prove he was right that he can coach in the NBA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the fall after Dusty May took Florida Atlantic on a shocking run to the Final Four in 2023, the Atlanta Hawks invited him to attend their training camp. When he returned to FAU, he told his staff he thought he could coach at that level. For those who know May best, the NBA is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-2005337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2005337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2005337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2005337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2005337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}