DALLAS (AP) \u2014 The Dallas Mavericks and Dusty May of national champion Michigan are finalizing a deal for the coach to make the jump from college to the NBA, a person with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press on Monday.<\/p>\n
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the deal wasn\u2019t completed.<\/p>\n
May and the Wolverines won their first NCAA championship since 1989 with a 69-63 victory over UConn in April to wrap up a 34-3 season. They opened the NCAA Tournament by becoming the first team ever to score at least 90 points in five consecutive games.<\/p>\n
That came three years after May led Florida Atlantic to its only Final Four appearance. The Owls returned to the NCAA Tournament in 2024 before May was hired by Michigan.<\/p>\n
The 49-year-old May replaces Jason Kidd, who was let go two weeks after Masai Ujiri was hired as president of basketball operations and alternate governor of the Mavericks.<\/p>\n
He comes to the NBA with a chance to mold 2025 No. 1 overall draft pick and reigning Rookie of the Year Cooper Flagg. Veteran star Kyrie Irving is also on the roster for now after missing the entire 2025-26 season following an ACL tear in March of last year.<\/p>\n
May\u2019s first job as a college assistant was at Murray State in 2005-06. He then served on staffs at UAB, Louisiana Tech and Florida before getting his first head coaching job at Florida Atlantic.<\/p>\n
The Owls went 35-4 during their dream season in 2022-23, which ended with a 72-71 loss to San Diego State in the national semifinals when Lamont Butler hit a buzzer-beating shot for the Aztecs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a fan of Dusty\u2019s when he was at FAU,\u201d said Yaxel Lendeborg, who played for May at Michigan and is expected to be a lottery pick in the first round of the NBA draft on Tuesday night. \u201cAnd now, after playing for him, I\u2019m a bigger fan. I have so much respect for Dusty May, I can\u2019t even tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lendeborg said at last month\u2019s draft combine that he believed May ran Michigan\u2019s program like an NBA program in many ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of schemes, a lot of switching and stuff. And his offense was very much a pro-style offense,\u201d Lendeborg said. \u201cWe played fast-paced, physical, all of that. \u2026 I\u2019ve gained so much knowledge from him as far as those actions and just those little communication keys.\u201d<\/p>\n
May\u2019s rise in coaching has been meteoric, particularly after the last four seasons.<\/p>\n
He took over at Florida Atlantic in 2018 and had four consecutive seasons of finishing just over .500 \u2014 before striking gold in the 2022-23 season, going 35-4 and taking the Owls on that improbable Final Four run.<\/p>\n
May went 25-9 at FAU the following season, then went to Michigan and brought the Wolverines back to prominence. He was 64-13 in his two seasons after replacing Juwan Howard with Michigan coming off an 8-24 season, the school\u2019s lowest win total since going 7-20 in 1981-82.<\/p>\n
Michigan went 27-10 in May\u2019s debut, won the Big Ten Conference Tournament and made it to the NCAA Sweet 16.<\/p>\n
May\u2019s record in his last four college seasons was 124-26, an .827 winning percentage that was third best in all of major college men\u2019s basketball over that span behind Houston\u2019s Kelvin Sampson (.861) and Duke\u2019s Jon Scheyer (.832).<\/p>\n
The Indiana native was a student manager for the Hoosiers and coach Bob Knight while he was in school there from 1996-2000. He gained experience in scouting, video operations and player development while with the Hall of Fame coach, who died in 2023.<\/p>\n
After graduating from Indiana, May spent two seasons as an administrative assistant and video coordinator at Southern California. He returned to the Hoosiers in similar roles from 2002-05.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DALLAS (AP) \u2014 The Dallas Mavericks and Dusty May of national champion Michigan are finalizing a deal for the coach to make the jump from college to the NBA, a person with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press on Monday. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the deal … Continue reading Mavericks are hiring national champ coach Dusty May away from Michigan, AP source says<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1517096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-06-24 11:17:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1517096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1517097,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517096\/revisions\/1517097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1517096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1517096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1517096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}