Dusty May Was Taking Mike Boynton Jr to Mavs If He Didn’t Get the Michigan Job

Mike Boynton Jr. found out he might be running Michigan basketball at his own Father's Day dinner table, and nobody in the house believed a word of it.

The first whiff came Sunday evening. Dusty May had already been back from talking with the Dallas Mavericks about the opportunity, and he floated the two paths to Boynton directly.

"Hey, I think this may be something that happens," Boynton recalled May telling him. "If you could get this job, I'd like to help you. If not, maybe there's an opportunity to go with him."

Then came the part that makes the story. Boynton had spent most of Father's Day with his wife and children, and he brought that conversation back to dinner.

"Everybody in my house is like, 'What are you talking about?'" he told Rich. May's name had been attached to seemingly every open job that spring, so the family had heard this song before.

It got real fast the next morning. Boynton saw an alert on his phone from Shams that May had accepted the Mavericks job. Then he did what he had already planned to do on a Monday when he still assumed he was an assistant coach at Michigan: he took his son to the Dusty May Basketball Camp at Crisler Arena.

May was not there when camp opened.

"That was the next sign that maybe there was a little bit more to the story," Boynton said.

Rich asked whether all of it wears on a guy, particularly the part where Boynton now owns every NIL and portal headache that comes with the chair. Boynton did not flinch, but he did not pretend either.

"I try not to view things in a negative light. I'm a fairly optimistic person," he said. "This is a big job, though. And I understand the gravity of it, considering now the expectation is you go 38 and 2 and you win all your games by 35 points."

His confidence traces back to the backcourt. Boynton pointed to two guards as the engine of the roster and did not bother hedging about where they rank.

"Guard play is the name of the game at every level," he said. "We've got probably the best backcourt in the country, in my opinion."

He likes the frontcourt too, and there are young players the public does not know yet. What he wants people to understand is that the bar has not moved. "There should be no expectation drop-off from the Michigan basketball fans."

Asked what he brings that is different, Boynton went dry. "A different voice. I'm a little bit taller. My complexion's darker."

The basketball itself is going to look familiar, and that is on purpose. This roster was recruited to play a certain way, and Boynton spent two years watching that approach produce what he called a wild level of success in an era that demands constant adaptation.

"I'm not the smartest person in the room," he said, "but when I think about how this team should play, it was recruited to play a certain way."

The one honest adjustment is up front. Michigan will not have the frontcourt depth it had a year ago, which Boynton noted is nearly impossible to replicate when three of those guys came off the board in the top 12 of the NBA Draft.

He is not using that as a hedge.

"We're still going to be good enough to compete at the top of the conference and on the national level."