Dan Hurley will not go to the NBA after all. The UConn coach declined a six-year, $70 million contract offer from the Los Angeles Lakers to become the team’s next head coach, team and league sources confirmed Monday.
Los Angeles would have made Hurley one of the NBA’s six highest-paid coaches. Instead, Hurley will return to UConn to pursue a third straight national championship — a feat that has only been accomplished once in NCAA men’s basketball history, when UCLAunder John Wooden won seven consecutive titles from 1967 to 1973.
I am humbled by this entire experience,” Hurley said in a statement Monday. “At the end of the day, I am extremely proud of the championship culture we have built at Connecticut. We met as a team before today’s workout and our focus right now is getting better this summer and connecting as a team as we continue to pursue championships.”
The 51-year-old Hurley publicly emerged as a leading candidate for the Lakers last week. Lakers vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka and team governor Jeanie Buss made an aggressive pitch to Hurley in Los Angeles on Friday. Nonetheless, that wasn’t enough to sway Hurley, who cemented his status as the top active coach in college basketball by guiding UConn to back-to-back national championships in 2023 and 2024.
