The Nuggets’ winningest coach has found a new home. And it’s not in the NBA.
The University of North Carolina is appointing Michael Malone as its next men’s basketball coach, according to a — a hire that sent shock waves through the college hoops world and through Ball Arena on Monday.
“Very unexpected,” first-year Nuggets coach and longtime Malone assistant David Adelman said, “just because I hadn’t heard anything about that. … After shootaround, we saw that it was a possibility. So I’m just happy for him and his family. He belongs in coaching, and that’s what he should be doing.”
Malone, 54, has taken the year off from coaching after the Kroenke family fired him three games before the 2025 playoffs. He enjoyed a 10-year tenure in Denver, leading the Nuggets to their first NBA championship, winning a franchise-record 471 regular-season games and overseeing Nikola Jokic’s development from a second-round pick to a three-time MVP.
North Carolina is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious coaching positions in the country — college or pro. The school fired Hubert Davis in March after a first-round exit from the NCAA Tournament as a No. 6 seed. It ended a five-year run for Davis, who led the Tar Heels to the NCAA title game in his first season but lost to Christian Braun’s Kansas Jayhawks. UNC has won six national championships in men’s basketball, most recently in 2017 under Naismith Hall of Famer Roy Williams.
Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan had emerged as one of Carolina’s top targets in recent weeks during a national search, but he wasn’t willing to engage the school until after the NBA season, according to reports. Malone surfaced Monday as a surprise candidate. He has spent time on UNC’s campus in recent months. His daughter, Bridget, will be a sophomore on the UNC volleyball team next season.
“Obviously, Billy’s name had been mentioned everywhere,” Adelman said before the Nuggets hosted the Trail Blazers on Monday. “But not just the basketball part — historic job to take — but just the cool part (is) his daughter going to school there and all the elements to it. Basketball in America has changed, with the NIL in college. … A guy like (Malone), I mean, he’d be perfect for that job. So yeah, for all the guys that are here that have known him, we were all super excited.”
Malone immediately becomes the only active NCAA head coach to have won an NBA championship as a head coach.
“I just think the discipline, the fact that it’s more of a professional environment now (makes him a good fit), especially at schools like that where you have to look at it like these guys are under contract now,” Adelman said. “I think a lot of NBA coaches understand what it means to coach somebody who’s making money. There’s a level you can’t go to like it’s 1950. But there’s definitely a level somewhere in the middle, and I think that’s what’s appropriate nowadays for the college game. Just watching the Final Four, man, like Illinois is a Euro League team. It’s a completely different landscape. So I think you’re gonna see more pro coaches of Coach Malone’s caliber looking at jobs like that, and it makes a lot of sense to me.”
This will be Malone’s first head coaching job in college basketball and his first foray into the amateur hoops world in 25 years. He got his start in coaching as an unpaid volunteer assistant at Oakland University in the Detroit area, where he also worked side jobs for Foot Locker and a cleaning company that assigned him to various office buildings between midnight and 4 a.m.
When his father, Brendan Malone, was hired as the inaugural coach of the Toronto Raptors, Michael begged for a job on his staff. Brendan preferred to get settled first. He was fired after one year on the job. Michael spent most of the 1990s instead as a college assistant, with stints at Oakland, Providence and Manhattan.
He’s worked in and around the NBA since 2001, serving as an assistant for the New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, New Orleans Hornets and Golden State Warriors. His first head coaching job was in Sacramento, where he was fired early in his second season. Malone has won 510 games between the Kings and Nuggets.
During his year off, he has worked as a studio analyst and color commentator for ESPN’s coverage of the NBA.
“Ten years ago, I was presented with the incredible opportunity to be the head coach of the Denver Nuggets. Little did I know the profound impact that would have on the next decade of my life,” Malone wrote last year in a full page advertisement he took out in The Denver Post. “… It has been my absolute pleasure to lead and fight for our team every night. To help bring Denver its first NBA championship is an accomplishment that I will always cherish.”
