Michael Malone through an NBA lens: What he'll do well and where it could get tricky at North Carolina

Three years after winning an NBA title in Denver, Michael Malone, an old-school coach, is off to North Carolina

James Herbert

Apr 6, 2026

7:38 pm ET

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8 min read

Imagn Images

If you're surprised that Michael Malone will be the next coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels, that's understandable. Unlike Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan, another candidate for the job, and unlike Boston Celtics president Brad Stevens, who wasn't interested in it, Malone isn't one of the names that is typically tossed around when a major college program has a coaching vacancy. He has worked in college basketball before, having served an assistant coach at Oakland, Providence and Manhattan and the director of basketball administration at Virginia, but that seven-year stretch ended when he joined the New York Knicks' coaching staff 25 years ago. Malone has spent the vast majority of his professional life in the NBA.

Malone has a connection to UNC, though. His daughter Bridget is a freshman on the volleyball team, and as a result he has spent significant time in Chapel Hill. He has attended the basketball team's practices, and, last October, he appeared on the Tar Heels' official podcast. While he didn't attend North Carolina himself -- he played point guard for Loyola (Maryland) -- he said on that podcast that his father, the late coach Brendan Malone, talked to him about Dean Smith from when he was a little kid.

"I've always been a Carolina fan," he said. "And when she decided to come here, that made it even that much more special because now I'm 'Go Heels' for everything. I root for all the teams. I have fallen in love with Chapel Hill."

OK, so Malone loves Chapel Hill. And he won an NBA championship in 2023 as the coach of the Denver Nuggets. What else should college fans know about him, though? Let's start with the reputation he had long before he got to Denver.

Malone is an old-school, defense-first guy, right?

That was certainly the book on him before he got to Denver. Malone's father was a disciplinarian, and when Malone was an assistant coach under Mike Brown in Cleveland, Monty Williams in New Orleans and Mark Jackson in Golden State. he was in charge of the defense.

"I would say that even though I'm a young coach in the NBA, in terms of tenure for NBA head coaches, I'd say I also have a lot of old school about me," Malone told Mike Olsen, then of Denver Stiffs, in 2016. "I value discipline. I know it worked for me when I played, and maybe it's because I grew up with it in the household, but I responded best to coaches that were hard on me, disciplined me and didn't take the easy route. That was good for me, and at the end of the day, that's what I believe in, as obviously that's my approach."

In that 2016 interview, Malone then brought up his relationship with DeMarcus Cousins, who clashed with numerous coaches in Sacramento but got along swimmingly with Malone. The Kings' decision to fire Malone (early in the 2014-15 season, while Cousins was out with viral meningitis) rubbed their franchise player the wrong way and aged terribly. Malone was in the early stages of establishing a culture in Sacramento, and Cousins, who clashed with many other Kings coaches, had bought in.

In 2017, three years after Malone had kicked him out of a practice, Cousins recounted the story to Kevin Arnovitz, then of ESPN:

> It's an afternoon in early 2014, midway through the season, and Mike Malone, first-year coach of the Kings, is conducting a particularly brutal practice. Malone was hired by the Kings the previous June, and Cousins has experienced practices like this before. "Mike has his days," Cousins says. "You've seen him on the sidelines, veins popping out of his head ... overly frustrated, mad at the world. This was one of those days."

Cousins is having one of those days too, dead tired from what seems to have been an almost intentionally sadistic practice. And when Malone yells at the team to line up to run sprints, Cousins turns defiant: "F--- this, man. I'm not running!"

And then, as Cousins recalls, "every bit of 5-9 Mike Malone comes up to me and says, 'Motherf---er, you're going to run or you're going to get the f--- out of my practice, you big p---y!' And I say, 'I ain't running, Mike!'"

Malone promptly shows Cousins the door.

Cousins went on to tell ESPN that, while Malone could get mad, it was never personal. "Mike was real," Cousins said. "Mike held everyone accountable, most of all himself. That's all that matters. That's all it's about." In the same story, Malone said that Cousins "always knew that I cared about him and loved him." Malone added: "Once you earn his trust, he'll go to war for you. I think pretty early in our relationship I earned his trust."

The Nuggets hired Malone in 2015. The year before he got there, ESPN published a feature, also by Arnovitz, entitled "The downfall