UConn men’s basketball head coach Dan Hurley turned down a lucrative six-year contract offer from the Los Angeles Lakers.
Earlier this week, he offered some details about his decision, while making it clear he did not reject the Lakers’ offer to gain leverage with UConn. The two-time national championship-winning coach said he had already agreed to terms of a new deal with UConn before he declined the Lakers’ offer.
“One of the worst takes I’ve heard is that this is a leverage play by me to improve my situation at UConn,” the Huskies coach said during a recent appearance on “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz.”
Hurley also said his wife Andrea’s initial reaction to the rumors that the Lakers had interest in hiring him as the team’s next head coach did not go over so well.
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Andrea Hurley listens during a news conference after Dan Hurley was introduced as Connecticut’s head coach in March 2018. (Mark Mirko/Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“She was crying in the beginning. I think, initially, the first couple days of it, she got violently angry and emotional, not like hitting me and stuff, not like, ‘Get away from me. I don’t want to consider this. You’re torturing me with this incredible opportunity, you horrible human being,’” Hurley said with a laugh.
But Andrea recently broke her silence on the situation, describing the past several 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 know, almost like, not real, you know, just because of the whole emotion,” Andrea told WFSB as she reflected on how she processed the situation.
“It was emotional, like, I will tell you, because I’m going to cry. I’m not going to cry. It was a lot. It was like, what? I said it probably was the worst week of my life. But, like, looking back, it’s probably going to be like the best. It really was the best week.”
Head coach Dan Hurley of the Connecticut Huskies speaks after defeating the Purdue Boilermakers in the national championship game at State Farm Stadium April 8, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (Alysa Rubin/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Andrea added she initially grappled with the logic behind potentially packing up and leaving Storrs, Connecticut, less than two months after watching her husband coach the Huskies to a second consecutive national title.
“You know, in my head, I’m saying to myself, like, ‘We’re leaving.’ Like, we just did this amazing thing that’s almost impossible to do, especially in this, this world of college basketball. And, like, we’re just going to pick up and leave, like, we’re just, you’re just so good at this. Like, why? Why? Like why?”
Dan Hurley of the Connecticut Huskies signals to his players during the national championship game against the Purdue Boilermakers at State Farm Stadium April 8, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
She also shared some details on the Lakers courtship, saying she believed the NBA franchise’s interest in her husband was “so sincere.”
“They sent their plane. The attention to detail. Like, they made us really feel like, welcomed. And that they wanted to be a part of our family. And they wanted us a part of their family. And it was, like, just so sincere. And the way that they, like, we’re talking to us. It was like I sat there, and all I did was cry, of course.”
Dan acknowledged the Lakers would have had to make him an offer he could not have refused for him to leave UConn.
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“To leave, there probably is [a number],” he said. “To leave a place at any moment in your life, to say that it’s not a motivating factor … the finances to leave a place is definitely a thing. To stay at a place, I don’t think it is ever going to be a thing. To stay somewhere like UConn, it would never have been a financial thing.”
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