Dan Hurley must now choose his destiny.
Option No. 1: Remain at Connecticut and chase the near-impossible feat of a three-peat, doing so while running the best program and operating as the best coach in men’s college basketball. Tough as it would be to actually pull this off, if he did it, Hurley would clinch all-time iconic status and match a run last seen by John Robert Wooden. If achieved, winning three consecutive NCAA titles would cement Hurley as a top-10 all-time college basketball coach.
Option No. 2: Leave his UConn legacy behind to coach maybe the best all-around player in the history of basketball (in the winter of LeBron James’ career) at maybe the most glamorous organization in American sports, the Los Angeles Lakers. Oh, and in doing so: get a raise that might triple his current salary (just north of $5 million annually).
That’s what winning back-to-back national championships in the most volatile environment in college sports history can provide you. In the past 27 months, Hurley has gone from promising coach with an irksome NCAA Tournament track record to one of the faces of American basketball success. Now, with the NBA Finals set to tip, suddenly the biggest story in sports is radiating from the West Coast all the way to Storrs, Connecticut, where the 51-year-old Hurley is on the verge of the biggest decision of his career. No matter what he decides in the coming days, he’ll probably never have another job offer that means more and stands to impact the future of two grander basketball entities than this one, right now, with the Huskies and Lakers.
That Lakers job has been open for a little more than a month, by the way. Until Thursday morning, there wasn’t a whiff of Hurley’s name being attached to the vacancy. That was until ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski dropped an early morning bombshell report that was worded thusly: “The Los Angeles Lakers are targeting UConn men’s basketball coach…
..
