The Los Angeles Lakers reportedly offered Dan Hurley $70 million to become their head coach. He ultimately declined that offer, with the reporting suggesting that he wanted to go for a third consecutive NCAA national championship at UConn and that the lifelong East Coast resident wasn't quite ready to make such a dramatic jump to the pros on the other side of the country. Further commentary, though, pointed out that the offer the Lakers made wasn't exactly commensurate with Hurley's value on the current market.
While $70 million is obviously quite a bit of money and would represent a raise on his current UConn deal, it wouldn't even bring him in line with Monty Williams, the Detroit Pistons coach, who signed for $78.5 million last offseason only to lose 28 consecutive games this season. That Williams deal completely reset the coaching market. Erik Spoelstra, Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr and Ty Lue have all signed extensions that pay them more than Williams annually since he accepted that deal. A $70 million pact with the Lakers, therefore, would not have even made Hurley one of the NBA's five highest-paid coaches. Considering the size of their market and the revenue it creates, the Lakers theoretically should have had the resources to offer him more.
While Hurley wouldn't state directly that he agreed, he certainly hinted that the Lakers' offer wasn't up to snuff on a Thursday appearance on the Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. Le Batard asked Hurley directly if there were an amount of money he would have taken to join the Lakers. "Yeah, I think to leave, there probably is," Hurley said. "To leave a place at any moment in your life, to say it's not a motivating factor, the finances, to leave a place, is definitely a thing."
Is there an amount of money the Lakers could have offered Dan Hurley that would have resulted in him leaving UConn?
— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) June 13, 2024
"To say that it's not a motivating factor – the finances –to leave a place, it's definitely a thing...To leave all that behind, there probably is a number. I don't… pic.twitter.com/5nsMtFNpYn
Hurley did not offer an amount the Lakers could have offered him to change his mind, and he denied using the Lakers as leverage to get a new deal with UConn.
"To stay at a place, I don't think it's ever gonna be a thing," Hurley said. "To stay somewhere like UConn, it would never have been, I think, a financial thing. Like, again, this wasn't like, some pressure tactic to make me the highest-paid college coach. That was already done. But to leave a place, to leave a place that you feel the way we do, and the family connect, with my wife, my sons, my mother in law, my brother and my father who, like, I know how much it means to my dad to go to the Big East Tournament and to come to 10 UConn games a year at home, sitting courtside when I'm coaching against Rick Pitino. To leave all that behind, there probably is a number. I don't know what that is."
There's no sense in speculating what that figure would be, but barring something completely out of line with Spoelstra's market-setting $120 million, eight-year deal or the $17.5 million Kerr earns annually, it's hard to imagine that the Lakers couldn't have afforded to pay Hurley. Forbes estimated that the Lakers had an operating income of $159 million last year, the second-highest figure in the league. They are currently valued at $6.4 billion. By all rights, the Lakers should be a financial juggernaut. They simply don't act like one.
That has especially been true on the coaching front. When the Lakers pursued Ty Lue in 2019, they insulted him with a low-ball three-year offer. When Frank Vogel won the 2020 championship, they only extended him for one year, and they waited 10 months to give him that deal. There is a history here, and it seems as though this approach to coaching may have just cost the Lakers Hurley.
