For the first time in nearly 75 years, North Carolina has handed its basketball program to an outsider. The school announced Tuesday that longtime NBA head coach Michael Malone will take over the Tar Heels, replacing Hubert Davis, who was fired on March 24 after five seasons following a first-round NCAA Tournament loss to No. 11 seed VCU. Malone signed a six-year deal worth $50 million in base compensation, which multiple reports peg as making him the second-highest-paid coach in college basketball behind Kansas’s Bill Self.

The résumé is not the question. Malone, 54, won 510 games across 12 seasons as an NBA head coach, including a 471-327 record in 10 seasons with the Denver Nuggets, and he led Denver to the 2023 NBA championship behind three-time MVP Nikola Jokic. Denver fired him on April 8, 2025, with less than a week left in that regular season, and he spent the past season as an ESPN analyst. What he has never been is a college head coach: his last college job was as a Manhattan assistant in 2001, after earlier assistant stints at Oakland and Providence.

That is precisely what makes the hire a break with history. Malone is North Carolina’s first head coach since Frank McGuire in 1952 to arrive with no prior connection to the school as a player or assistant, ending a lineage that ran through Dean Smith, Bill Guthridge, Matt Doherty, Roy Williams and Davis. The Daily Tar Heel noted he is the first UNC coach in nearly 75 years from outside the Smith or Williams coaching trees. His one personal tie to campus is a family one: his daughter Bridget plays volleyball at North Carolina.

In the school’s announcement, Malone called Carolina one of the most historic programs in the sport and said he would do everything he can to continue its championship legacy while preparing players for professional careers and life after basketball. At his introductory news conference at the Dean Smith Center, he leaned into his outsider status, acknowledging he did not play at Carolina and is not from Carolina, but saying he believes the fan base is ready to embrace somebody new. Steve Newmark, who becomes athletic director on July 1, said Malone was the first coach the school engaged in its search because of his reputation as a selfless teacher and innovator.