Dan Hurley isn’t the first college coach the Lakers failed to land

The UConn coach is the latest in a long and proud line of men who spurned the NBA's most glamorous franchise

Update to last Tuesday’s newsletter: Thanks in part to Jon Rothstein himself retweeting it, the half-baked idea of doing a piece on Rothstein tweeting college basketball minutiae during major world and domestic events became the most-read story in the history of The Front Porch. A big thanks to everyone who read it and, of course, to Jon himself, the very real human that he is.

This note isn’t here for my own self-aggrandizement, but to update loyal newsletter readers that Rothstein did not tweet anything in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s verdict in Hunter Biden’s gun trial. The man knows how to pick his spots.

Right as the 2024 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks was about to get started, the league’s biggest story was, as it so often is, away from the court.

On the morning of the title series’ first game in Boston, the Los Angeles Lakers’ meandering, five-week-long coaching search appeared to be nearing an end point, with reports circulating that the franchise was targeting UConn’s Dan Hurley and was preparing a massive offer to lure him away from Connecticut.

The Lakers had every reason to do so. While it’s debatable how well his intense, in-your-face demeanor might play with grown millionaires instead of college students – and whether he might have to change his get-down entirely – Hurley is a proven and undeniable winner, a reigning two-time national champion at the college level in an age in which that kind of feat frankly shouldn’t be possible. Beyond those impressive results, his teams run an innovative offensive system, one that even caught the attention of LeBron James (and might help explain why Hurley became a focus of the Lakers’ search in the first place).

On some level, it would make sense for Hurley, too. He’d get the chance to not only test himself in the NBA, but do so with the league’s most glamorous franchise, one that’s a perpetual destination for top free agents mulling their next stop. Though it’s fair to wonder how long it might be for Hurley would have gotten the opportunity to coach James, the defining superstar of his generation and a player who, despite pushing 40 years old, is still pretty damn good. Should Hurley flop like so many coaches who have made the college-to-NBA leap, he could enjoy some time off, wait for the frenzied NIL landscape to get itself figured out and have his choice of any college job that would come open.

What seemed like a potential marriage on paper, though, was one that never came to fruition.

On Monday, after days of will-he-or-won’t-he speculation, Hurley announced he was returning to UConn and spurning the Lakers’ offer of a six-year, $70 million contract. In a statement, he said he is “extremely proud of the championship culture we have built at Connecticut,” a factor that, along with the chance to win a third-consecutive title, was enough to hold off the Lakers’ advances.

Whether Hurley was genuinely torn or simply used the Lakers’ vacancy to accelerate negotiations for a new contract at UConn is a matter for debate – given the person who broke the news about the Lakers’ interest in Hurley is the same person who wrote a book about Hurley’s father, I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter – what Los Angeles tried to do by plucking one of the most decorated coaches in college basketball isn’t anything new.

In fact, Hurley is just the latest data point in a nearly 50-year-old pattern.

Jerry Tarkanian, 1979

As the 1970s drew to a close, the Lakers were a franchise in transition.

In 1979, Jerry Buss purchased the team from former owner Jack Kent Cooke, hoping to make a perennial second-place finisher in a fledgling league into the glitzy juggernaut it later became. That same year, the Lakers would go on to draft Magic Johnson with the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft, a decision that would go on to transform not only the Lakers organization, but the NBA as a whole.

As all of this was unfolding, Los Angeles was also in need of a coach, with Lakers legend Jerry West stepping down after the 1978-79 season.

Eventually, one name arose above all others.

Though he didn’t yet have a national championship – that would come 11 years later, in 1990 – Jerry Tarkanian was among the most highly regarded coaches in college basketball. Under Tarkanian’s watch, UNLV, once dismissively referred to as “Tumbleweed Tech,” had improbably become a national powerhouse. In 1977, the Runnin Rebels, just eight years after becoming a Division I program, made it all the way to the Final Four.

That year, the Lakers approached Tarkanian about a potential vacancy, though he told them he wasn’t interested. Two years later, and after a pair of 20-win seasons, Tarkanian was again skeptical of the job. Out of courtesy, he called Cooke back after the Lakers’ owner initially reached out to him. In order for him to take the job, Tarkanian said, it would have to be for a lot more than the $70,000 he had been offered in 1977. In fact, Los Angeles would need to double the $350,000 he was making at UNLV. 

Without hesitation, Cooke said that wouldn’t be a problem. Not only would that salary be met, making him the NBA’s highest-paid coach, but once negotiations began in earnest, the Lakers met all of Tarkanian’s demands, including a pair of season tickets for every home game and three luxury cars – one for himself, one for his wife and one for his oldest daughter.

With those agreements in place, the stage was set. Tarkanian would be the one to lead a team built around what would ultimately be two of the 10 greatest players in the history of the game.

Of course, that never materialized.