ESPN’s Brian Windhorst: Why Dusty May Left Michigan for the Dallas Mavericks

Rich wanted Brian Windhorst to explain a personal wound: why is Dusty May no longer on the bench at his alma mater? Windhorst answered with a question of his own. Why did Jay Wright retire? Why did Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheim say they had enough? Why is Bill Self going year to year?

"Because the NIL is hell," Windhorst said. "It's hell." That is the backdrop for everything that followed.

His understanding of the sequence is specific. May had agreed to a contract extension at Michigan but had not actually signed it, because he was eyeing this opportunity, a chance to coach in the NBA. Windhorst believes that had Steve Kerr retired, May would have been on the short list for the Warriors, and that he was on the radar of several other teams with openings before the Mavericks came calling.

Part of that is how the NBA pipeline now works. Executives heavily recruit college players, which means they sit in those gyms and watch those games, and over time they notice when a guy can really coach. May built that reputation. Then came a moment Windhorst said has never happened before. May got to draft one of his own Michigan players, congratulating him as the Wolverines' coach and welcoming him to the Mavericks in the same breath. Three of his guys went in a 15-minute span, and May had his pick of them.

The money fits the moment. The Mavericks' ownership, Windhorst noted, sits second in wealth only to Steve Ballmer, and they wanted a championship coach. They went after several, but the established champions were all under contract and none of their teams would let them out. Windhorst has not seen May's exact numbers, but he is sure May is being paid like a coach who has won an NBA title.

The Jon Scheyer piece checks out too. Dallas reached out to Scheyer first, Windhorst said, and Scheyer said no, he wants to win a championship at Duke before he would consider anything else. After the Mavericks struck out on the championship coaches, they circled back to Scheyer more than once, and he held firm. Only then did the offer to May become as lucrative as it did.

Windhorst landed where Rich did. He does not blame May. He gets an actual offseason. He does not have to re-recruit Cooper Flagg every year the way he would have to re-recruit his roster in college. He gets to coach Flagg, draft his own player, take the pay package, and work in Dallas. And if it does not work out, Windhorst added, a coach with a national-title pedigree can always go back. "It's kind of a no-brainer."

That, Rich said, is why his guy is no longer on the bench at Crisler. No banner in Ann Arbor was going to compete with this.