Dan Hurley made the only choice

His decision wasn't a referendum on college basketball. It was a no-brainer

Photo credit: Associated Press

For a weekend, Dan Hurley’s career was not his own. The next phase of his continued professional advancement meant more than his own ascension, or more money in his bank account, or some new goal for him to attack. The implications of his choice eclipsed even the future of UConn’s men’s program, a modern blueblood and the current standard-bearer for the sport, not to mention the lovable, enjoyably viable basketball-first conference in which it resides. All of that was subplot.

To many, the Los Angeles Lakers’ offer to make Hurley its next head coach was nothing less than a referendum on The State of College Basketball™ — on whether its best coaches were destined to be lured away to the bright lights of the pros, whether the sport Hurley has dominated for two seasons was simply too small-time to retain him. It was the latest sign that college basketball had become a sideshow, residing entirely in the NBA’s long rhetorical shadow. I don’t know who did the original concern-trolling tweet, but it became a meme over the weekend, that the two-time national champion coach might entertain an offer from the Lakers was a sad reflection of the state of college hoops. OK.

Or it was the reverse: If Hurley didn’t leave, it was proof that college basketball was resurgent. If UConn could go contract-for-contract with the Los Angeles Lakers, then clearly the NIL era’s retention of talent and improved level of play was having a systemic effect on the economics of the sport. Clearly, the NCAA Tournament’s consistently superior ratings to the even the NBA Finals were real, a sign of some larger shift. Clearly college basketball was all the way back.

And so on. From the minute Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news of the Lakers’ advanced interest last week — a classic, rare, midsummer NBA/college hoops news bomb delivered before many people on the East Coast woke up, even those with small children who never get to sleep in, ahem — folks rushed to lay out what it all would mean.

All the while the only real choice Hurley could make was obvious: He was going to stay. Of course he was.

It seems obvious in retrospect, but it also seemed obvious all along, because here’s the thing: Hurley’s choice wasn’t between all of the NBA on one hand or all of college hoops on the other. His choice was between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Connecticut Huskies, and one of those two jobs is the better one right now.