The most effective a part of Dan Hurley’s newest week on the heart of sports activities villain discourse was his onerous pivot on a podcast that was unfolding as anticipated — a bit bit of injury management, a contact of mea culpa, Hurley saying it was embarrassing to have proclaimed himself the perfect coach in males’s school basketball contemplating veteran friends who’re “nearly as good or higher than me.”
Pivot.
“The folks that wish to have at me, the tremendous delicate media folks that wish to cancel me for being an intense coach, , I don’t suppose we have to make sports activities softer,” Hurley informed Adam Finkelstein on a 247Sports podcast. “So, yeah, go for it. After which the followers of groups and applications that want they had been us, that get pleasure out of those moments with me on the sideline, then take pleasure in that. However you don’t have what we bought, which is the banners. But when that is your second proper right here to mock me on social media for being an intense coach, go for it.”
Cancel him? From what, internet hosting the ESPYs? “Being an intense coach” is how he describes proclaiming, “I’m the perfect coach within the f—ing sport” to an official he’s berating and ordering to take extra of it? Severely, how do you not love this man?
He was making his level pic.twitter.com/kfYOPMEmF5
— FOX School Hoops (@CBBonFOX) January 22, 2025
Severely. You truly ought to, should you love males’s school basketball, and even should you root for a workforce that considers UConn a rival, which I suppose could possibly be all the Huge East and any of the ability applications that wish to supplant the two-time defending champs. Throw in Syracuse and Pitt, too.
Throw in everybody. Hurley is an adversary to all. Additionally, he’s an genuine, outspoken persona who evokes emotion in others, an more and more uncommon commodity in a sport that was teeming with them.
His antics this season, which stretch again to Maui and calling an official a “f—ing joke,” have impressed waves of anger. Some laughter. And for me, a eager for the times, not all that way back, when this sport might out-personality some other.
John Calipari returns to Kentucky this weekend, and he would possibly get booed or he would possibly get cheered. I favored him greatest when he was getting screamed at by John Chaney. Rivalries? How about Jim Boeheim towards John Thompson? How about Bob Knight towards Gene Keady?
Throw a Billy Martin or a Jerry Glanville on the desk. I’ll elevate you an Al McGuire and a Rollie Massimino. Dale Brown, Nolan Richardson, Jim Valvano, Jud Heathcote, Clem Haskins, Rick Majerus, Bobby Cremins, Billy Tubbs … I’m forgetting folks, however I actually don’t suppose that is shut.
As for villains, let’s attempt Jerry Tarkanian, Bob Huggins, Boeheim, Knight and Mike Krzyzewski for starters. Krzyzewski, like Hurley, largely due to all of the profitable.
Sure, we’ve bought Rick Pitino again, however he’s slowed down a bit and has turn out to be a considerably sympathetic character, a man who asks Kentucky followers not to boo his friend-turned-adversary Calipari. We’ve bought fireplace on some sidelines. Brad Underwood. Bruce Pearl. Nate Oats. Tom Izzo, although his warmth index peaked within the days of Bo Ryan eliciting smoke from his ears.
Bo Ryan. Rattling. The great outdated days. No offense to right now’s teaching neighborhood at massive, but it surely appears to be a largely affable, noncontroversial group.
No offense to males’s school basketball, which I occur to like and discover compelling from November by means of March, however its recognition has declined over the previous a number of years. (Girls’s school basketball has soared and might thank Caitlin Clark and different stars, however let’s additionally acknowledge the transcendent villainy of Geno Auriemma and Kim Mulkey.)
Soccer and realignment are recognized culprits, and coaches will ensure the switch portal will get its due blame. That’s fantastic. I’d additionally wish to counsel that the extra folks within the sport who make folks really feel a sure approach — particularly individuals who can take or depart the sport — the higher it’s for the sport. And that extra can be welcome.
That may’t be manufactured. With Hurley, I don’t suppose something is. This man has engaged in trash-talking classes with followers of a number of groups, together with his personal, per Mike Anthony of Hearst Media, and isn’t afraid to let fly with an expletive on the White Home.
Sure, he went too far with a few of his feedback to officers. The “greatest coach” factor is price a hearty eye roll. So had been Hurley’s feedback complaining about TV cameras spending an excessive amount of time on him and never as a lot on his counterparts.
(In a pertinent if considerably bizarre train, I saved monitor of the digicam close-up time throughout Peacock’s broadcast of UConn’s comeback win over DePaul on Wednesday, and Chris Holtmann had an fringe of 51 seconds to Hurley’s 36 seconds. Possibly this simply means Hurley is already scaring broadcast companions into leaving him alone, which might truly be his greatest offense but.)
This isn’t meant to defend all Hurley has accomplished or be part of the sycophancy that inevitably emerges to counteract coach criticisms. However among the criticisms are a bit a lot. He’s not the one coach who barks at officers. Saturday night time at Auburn’s Neville Area, I watched Pearl and Rick Barnes gripe at all of them night time, taking temporary breaks to talk to their groups.
Additionally, officiating isn’t ok on this sport as a result of they aren’t full-time workers and aren’t paid sufficient in order that they work approach an excessive amount of.
Knight comparisons are unfair. Look intently at Knight’s legacy and also you see an excessive amount of problematic therapy of people to disregard. Hurley is a hothead.
He acknowledged as a lot on the identical podcast, referring to the “darkish aspect” of his persona. Look intently at his story — learn this one by my colleague Brendan Quinn — and also you notice you’re witnessing the tightly wound, hypercompetitive little brother of a legend who struggled with that for a very long time and tended to his personal psychological well being at an age and time earlier than that was a lot of a factor.
Possibly that’s one of the simplest ways for faculty basketball followers to have a look at Hurley. As an annoying, bombastic little brother. You don’t have to love him. You do have to like him.
(Picture: David Butler II / Imagn Photos)