Dan Hurley hints that Lakers could have swayed him to accept coaching job with bigger offer

The Los Angeles Lakers reportedly offered Dan Hurley $70 million to become their head coach. He ultimately declined that offer, with the reporting suggesting that he wanted to go for a third consecutive NCAA national championship at UConn and that the lifelong East Coast resident wasn’t quite ready to make such a dramatic jump to the pros on the other side of the country. Further commentary, though, pointed out that the offer the Lakers made wasn’t exactly commensurate with Hurley’s value on the current market.

While $70 million is obviously quite a bit of money and would represent a raise on his current UConn deal, it wouldn’t even bring him in line with Monty Williams, the Detroit Pistons coach, who signed for $78.5 million last offseason only to lose 28 consecutive games this season. That Williams deal completely reset the coaching market. Erik Spoelstra, Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr and Ty Lue have all signed extensions that pay them more than Williams annually since he accepted that deal. A $70 million pact with the Lakers, therefore, would not have even made Hurley one of the NBA’s five highest-paid coaches. Considering the size of their market and the revenue it creates, the Lakers theoretically should have had the resources to offer him more.

While Hurley wouldn’t state directly that he agreed, he certainly hinted that the Lakers’ offer wasn’t up to snuff on a Thursday appearance on the Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. Le Batard asked Hurley directly if there were an amount of money he would have taken to join the Lakers. “Yeah, I think to leave, there probably is,” Hurley said. “To leave a place at any moment in your life, to say it’s not a motivating factor, the finances, to leave a place, is definitely a thing.”

Hurley did not offer an amount the Lakers could have offered him to change his mind, and he denied using the Lakers as leverage to get a new deal with UConn. 

“To stay at a place, I don’t think it’s ever gonna be a thing,” Hurley said. “To stay somewhere like UConn, it would never have been, I think, a financial…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/dan-hurley-hints-that-lakers-could-have-swayed-him-to-accept-coaching-job-with-bigger-offer/

Author : Sam Quinn

Publish date : 2024-06-13 18:52:42

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