A little over two months after delivering Michigan its first men’s basketball championship since 1989, Dusty May stunned the Maize and Blue—and all of college basketball—departing the Wolverines for the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, according to multiple reports.
May's departure from Michigan has several domino effects, from setting into motion the process to find his replacement in Ann Arbor, to the potential implications the move could have on Michigan’s roster to the impact that hiring May could have on the Mavericks’ NBA draft plans.
The seismic move also got us at Sports Illustrated thinking. There have been plenty of collegiate coaches who have made the leap to the NBA ranks, to varying degrees of success. But how many times have we seen a national championship-winning college coach make the jump to the NBA, and how have they fared in the pros?
Dusty May leaving Michigan and following in these coaches’ footsteps
Larry Brown
Brown's departure from Kansas for the Spurs fresh off of winning a national championship in 1988 most closely resembles the circumstances of May's Michigan exit, as both coaches left the collegiate ranks on top. However, Brown had also already coached among professionals for four years in the ABA and five seasons in the NBA before delivering the Jayhawks a national title.
In 27 seasons as an NBA coach, Brown amassed 1,098 wins, the ninth-most all-time, led two different teams to the NBA Finals and captured a championship with the 2003–04 Pistons. Brown is still the only coach in basketball history to win both a collegiate national title and an NBA championship.
Jerry Tarkanian
While Tarkanian didn't leave for the NBA just months after leading his collegiate program to a national title—he did so two years after reaching the collegiate mountaintop—his departure from the college ranks is similar to May's in that neither coach had prior NBA experience before taking on the pro game.
Tarkanian led Long Beach State to four straight NCAA tournaments before taking the UNLV job in 1973. Incredibly, Tarkanian never had a losing season in a Hall of Fame career as a college basketball coach, and led UNLV to its first and only national title in 1990. Unfortunately, he didn't enjoy the same success in the NBA, as he coached just 20 games, going 9–11 with the Spurs before he was fired in December 1992.
Rick Pitino
Pitino, the current coach at St. John’s, began his lengthy college basketball coaching career in 1975 and first made the leap to the NBA in the 1980s as an assistant coach with the Knicks. After returning to college with a stint at Providence, Pitino spent two seasons in the head coach’s chair with New York, going 90–74 before returning to the collegiate ranks once again, taking over at Kentucky.
The longtime coach returned the Wildcats to national championship glory in 1995–96, his seventh season in Lexinton, then departed Lexington for the Celtics' head coaching job in ‘97. Pitino’s Celtics tenure became better known for a legendary rant amid the franchise’s mid-90s futility than for on-court success and Pitino, who later said he’d never leave Kentucky if he could do it all over again, resigned after just four seasons.
Billy Donovan
Before Donovan came to Gainesville, the Gators had made it to the NCAA tournament just five times since 1920. He proceeded to oversee a golden era of Gators basketball, leading the program to 14 March Madness berths, including nine straight, and back-to-back national championships in 2005–06 and 2006–07.
After posting just his second losing season at the helm in 2014–15, Donovan departed Florida for the NBA, taking the job with a young Thunder team led by Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Donovan came within one win of the NBA Finals in his first season in Oklahoma City, then failed to advance out of the first round of the playoffs in his next five appearances with the Thunder and Bulls. Still, Donovan is among the more successful coaches to make the college-to-NBA jump.
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