Dom Amore: Lakers got in Dan Hurley's head, but couldn't wrest his heart from UConn

Dan Hurley showed up at the Werth Center to unpack from the strange trip he’d just taken, and taken UConn and all who care about its men’s basketball program with him.

“In my gut, I knew he would stay,” said Hassan Diarra, who has helped the Huskies win two championships and is ready to lead the fight for a third. “He didn’t want to leave, he loves us too much.”

If only it were that simple. The Lakers, one of the enduringly successful and popular franchises in NBA history, called last week and complicated Hurley’s idyllic existence in Connecticut.

“So many things go through your mind,” Hurley said three days after he turned down the Lakers’ offer to stay at UConn. “It’s your family, it’s where you are best suited to be as a coach, it’s a business side, it’s your loyalty to your players, it’s the relationship you have with Connecticut, a place where you’re happy. There are so many things, your mind races, it raced the whole time.”

There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s get to it, let’s try to reconstruct a timeline.

Hurley led the UConn men to a second straight national championship in April, and the six-year, $32.1 million contract he signed last June was now out of date. That may be hard for those not involved in college sports to get their minds around, but it’s reality. Kentucky was looking for a new head coach and would have thrown twice that much at Hurley.

Hurley had no interest in leaving UConn for another college job and wanted his agent, Bret Just, to proceed accordingly. Within weeks, a new proposal was on Hurley’s desk that would make him the third highest-paid coach in college basketball, something like $50 million for six years, north of $8 million in average annual value.

“It’s flattering, what (AD) Dave Benedict’s put in front of me,” Hurley said.

But the deal was not, and is not done. It’s not about becoming the highest paid coach in college basketball, a concept Gov. Ned Lamont has floated. A college coach’s contract has much more than salary to consider. There is making sure assistant coaches, so important to UConn’s success, in particular, are well compensated. The size of the support staff, access to resources for recruiting, the availability of name-image-likeness money for players.

A few weeks ago, there was a court settlement in which the NCAA could soon implement a plan of revenue sharing. Will UConn have enough money to compete in that arena?

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