Report: Los Angeles Lakers targeting Dan Hurley as next head coach
After turning down interest at the college level to leave UConn, Dan Hurley might be on the move after all. The Los Angeles Lakers are targeting Hurley as their next head coach of the franchise, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
No deal has been reached yet, per the report. The Lakers have had preliminary contact with Hurley and the sides are planning to escalate discussions in the coming days, per the report.
The news of the Lakers going after Hurley comes just a few days after it was reported the Lakers had their eyes set on ESPN analyst and former NBA and Duke guard JJ Redick for the job. On Tuesday, Shams Charania reported that the Lakers were ‘zeroing in on’ Redick as their next coach.
Redick has long been considered to be a candidate for the Lakers job, although he is first set to broadcast the NBA Finals between the Mavericks and Celtics, which begins on this evening. Redick also interviewed with the Charlotte Hornets for their head coaching job after Charlotte’s season ended.
Redick spent 16 seasons in the NBA. He shot 41.5 percent from 3-point range in his career, while playing for the Magic, Bucks, Clippers, 76ers, Pelicans and Mavericks.
Hurley has been the head coach at UConn for the last six seasons and has taken the program to extraordinary heights. After taking Rhode Island to the second round of the NCAA Tournament twice in six seasons, Hurley moved on to UConn. By just his third season, Hurley had the Huskies back in the NCAA Tournament. Success did not take long to find.
In his fifth season as head coach, Hurley led a 4-seed Huskies team all the way to the national championship. Despite the pressure of repeating in 2023-24, UConn did just that, looking rather dominant in every game it played along the way to its second straight national championship.
In six seasons with the Huskies, Hurley has a record of 141-58. He is 292-163 overall in his college coaching career. To go along with that record, Hurley has reached the NCAA Tournament a grand total of six times, holding a 14-4 record in it. Hurley was the national Coach of the Year in 2024, the Big East Coach of the Year in 2024 and the A-10 Coach of the Year in 2018.
Hurley was considered a heavy target to replace John Calipari at Kentucky, although the two sides never amounted to a deal, or even reports of one in the works. After making it public he was not taking the job, Hurley explained further why he turned the job down while speaking with Dan Dakich in April.
“I told them very early on, I have no interest. My wife, my family, we have no interest,” Hurley said. “Why would you leave the current best program in the country to go somewhere else?”