UConn males’s basketball head coach Dan Hurley turned down a profitable six-year contract supply from the Los Angeles Lakers.
Earlier this week, he provided some particulars about his determination, whereas making it clear he didn’t reject the Lakers’ supply to achieve leverage with UConn. The 2-time nationwide championship-winning coach mentioned he had already agreed to phrases of a brand new take care of UConn earlier than he declined the Lakers’ supply.
“One of many worst takes I’ve heard is that this can be a leverage play by me to enhance my state of affairs at UConn,” the Huskies coach mentioned throughout a latest look on “The Dan Le Batard Present with Stugotz.”
Hurley additionally mentioned his spouse Andrea’s preliminary response to the rumors that the Lakers had curiosity in hiring him because the crew’s subsequent head coach didn’t go over so effectively.
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Andrea Hurley listens throughout a information convention after Dan Hurley was launched as Connecticut’s head coach in March 2018. (Mark Mirko/Hartford Courant/Tribune Information Service through Getty Photos)
“She was crying at first. I believe, initially, the primary couple days of it, she obtained violently offended and emotional, not like hitting me and stuff, not like, ‘Get away from me. I don’t need to take into account this. You’re torturing me with this unimaginable alternative, you horrible human being,’” Hurley mentioned with fun.
However Andrea just lately broke her silence on the state of affairs, describing the previous a number of days as “the worst week of my life.”
UCONN’S DAN HURLEY CLARIFIES DECISION TO REJECT LAKERS’ COACHING JOB: ‘I ALREADY HAD THE LEVERAGE’
“Yeah. It was. It’s been, you understand, virtually like, not actual, you understand, simply due to the entire emotion,” Andrea informed WFSB as she mirrored on how she processed the state of affairs.
“It was emotional, like, I’ll inform you, as a result of I’m going to cry. I’m not going to cry. It was rather a lot. It was like, what? I mentioned it in all probability was the worst week of my life. However, like, trying again, it’s in all probability going to be like the perfect. It actually was the perfect week.”
Head coach Dan Hurley of the Connecticut Huskies speaks after defeating the Purdue Boilermakers within the nationwide championship recreation at State Farm Stadium April 8, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (Alysa Rubin/NCAA Photographs through Getty Photos)
Andrea added she initially grappled with the logic behind doubtlessly packing up and leaving Storrs, Connecticut, lower than two months after watching her husband coach the Huskies to a second consecutive nationwide title.
“You recognize, in my head, I’m saying to myself, like, ‘We’re leaving.’ Like, we simply did this superb factor that’s virtually unattainable to do, particularly on this, this world of faculty basketball. And, like, we’re simply going to choose up and go away, like, we’re simply, you’re simply so good at this. Like, why? Why? Like why?”
Dan Hurley of the Connecticut Huskies alerts to his gamers throughout the nationwide championship recreation towards the Purdue Boilermakers at State Farm Stadium April 8, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (Mitchell Layton/Getty Photos)
She additionally shared some particulars on the Lakers courtship, saying she believed the NBA franchise’s curiosity in her husband was “so honest.”
“They despatched their aircraft. The eye to element. Like, they made us actually really feel like, welcomed. And that they needed to be part of our household. They usually needed us part of their household. And it was, like, simply so honest. And the way in which that they, like, we’re speaking to us. It was like I sat there, and all I did was cry, in fact.”
Dan acknowledged the Lakers would have needed to make him a suggestion he couldn’t have refused for him to go away UConn.
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“To go away, there in all probability is [a number],” he mentioned. “To go away a spot at any second in your life, to say that it isn’t a motivating issue … the funds to go away a spot is unquestionably a factor. To remain at a spot, I do not suppose it’s ever going to be a factor. To remain someplace like UConn, it could by no means have been a monetary factor.”
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