A little more than a month after officially stepping down as the men’s basketball coach of Notre Dame, where he had spent the last 23 seasons, Mike Brey is jumping to the pros.
Brey, 64, will join the staff of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks for the 2023-24 season, a person familiar with the situation confirmed to USA TODAY Sports. The person requested anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly comment until the hiring is official.
The South Bend Tribune was first to report the news.
The hiring presents something of a reversal, as Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick had indicated in the school’s January announcement of Brey’s eventual stepping down that Brey would remain on the Fighting Irish staff in an as-yet undefined capacity.
Brey, who has several family members who live near Tampa, Florida, had also been linked to the previously open men’s basketball coaching job at the University of South Florida. Instead, Brey will make the jump to his first coaching job outside of the college ranks.
While an assistant at Duke, Brey coached current Hawks head coach Quinn Snyder, who played four seasons for the Blue Devils. Snyder joined coach Mike Krzyzewski’s staff in 1995, the same year Brey left Duke to become a head coach at Delaware. The two have since remained close. Brey spent a few days toward the end of the NBA’s regular season in Atlanta attending and scouting Hawks games.
Snyder was hired in late February to replace Nate McMillian.
On Monday morning, during an appearance on Dan Dakich’s “Don’t @ Me” podcast, Brey said he watched all eight first-round NBA playoff games over the weekend. It’s the most time that he can remember watching the NBA, something he just didn’t have time to do at this point in the calendar as a college coach.
“That does intrigue me,” Brey had said about the NBA during his 25-minute appearance.
Brey compiled a 483-280 (.633) record at Notre Dame, the most victories in Fighting Irish history. In his career, including five seasons at Delaware from 1995-2000, he has posted a 582-332 (.637) mark.
Brey’s teams at Delaware and Notre Dame made 15 NCAA Tournament appearances. He was instrumental in helping turn around a Fighting Irish program that was a bottom feeder in the Big East in the years before he took over. Brey led Notre Dame to tournament berths in 12 of his first 17 seasons there. In the most recent six, however, he led the program to the big dance just once, in 2021-22.
Brey is a three-time Big East Coach of the Year and was the AP Coach of the Year for the 2010-11 season. His 146 Big East conference victories still rank fifth all-time in the league, even though Notre Dame joined the Atlantic Coast Conference in men’s basketball and other sports in 2013. Notre Dame won the Big East under Brey during his first season there in 2000-01 and the ACC Tournament in 2014-15. He led the Irish to consecutive Elite Eight appearances in the 2015 and 2016 NCAA Tournaments. Brey played college basketball at Northwestern State in Louisiana and George Washington.
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