Dusty May Lands in Dallas. Michigan Never Saw It Coming. Or Did They?

Less than three months after cutting down the nets at the national championship, Dusty May is leaving Michigan for the NBA.

The Dallas Mavericks finalized a deal to hire May as their next head coach, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania, Adam Schefter, and Pete Thamel, confirmed by multiple other outlets. May, 49, replaces Jason Kidd, who was let go in May after five seasons and a 26-56 finish in the franchise’s first full year without Luka Doncic.

It’s one of the more stunning coaching moves in recent memory, and not just because of the timing.

Who Is Dusty May?

If you don’t follow college basketball closely, here’s what you need to know. May built his reputation the hard way, starting as an assistant at Murray State in 2005 before working his way up through UAB, Louisiana Tech, and Florida over more than a decade.

His first head coaching job was at Florida Atlantic, where he eventually led the Owls to one of the great Cinderella stories in recent NCAA Tournament history, a 35-4 season and a Final Four run in 2022-23. When Michigan came calling after Juwan Howard’s dismissal, May took the job and went 64-13 over two seasons, the most wins by any head coach in their first two seasons at a school in the last 95 years. He capped it with a 34-3 national championship season, beating UConn 69-63 in the title game.

That’s the resume Dallas is betting on.

Why Did He Leave?

Here’s the part that makes this story more complicated than a simple “NBA money beats college money” narrative. May had actually ruled out all other college coaching jobs this offseason, including what many considered the most prestigious opening in the sport at North Carolina. He told Michigan officials as recently as the night before the championship game that he wasn’t going anywhere in college basketball.

But the NBA was always a different conversation.

And there were signs May was already emotionally ready for a change. In a revealing interview with CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander this spring, May described an unexpected case of post-title blues in the new era of college athletics, where coaches transition immediately from the court to the transfer portal with barely a moment to breathe. “And I don’t know if it’s just me,” May said, “but I’d heard where you climb the ladder and you say, ‘Is this really it?’ And it was worse. It was less than ‘it.’ The journey was so much better than the destination.”

That’s a revealing window into where May’s head was, even before Dallas came calling. The chance to build something in the NBA, particularly around Cooper Flagg, was clearly a different kind of challenge than anything college basketball could offer at this point.

What Dallas Gets

The Mavericks are in a genuine rebuilding moment right now, and they’ve been upfront about it. The franchise traded Doncic to the Lakers for Anthony Davis in February 2025, a deal that almost immediately unraveled: Davis ended up with the Wizards, general manager Nico Harrison was fired in November, and new team president Masai Ujiri came in to start over. Kidd was let go despite roughly $40 million remaining on his contract.

The centerpiece of what comes next is Cooper Flagg, the No. 1 overall pick in 2025 who just won Rookie of the Year after averaging 21 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 4.5 assists per game. Pairing May, a coach who just developed three first-round picks at Michigan, with a 19-year-old franchise cornerstone is a deliberate, forward-thinking decision from Ujiri.

Dallas also has Kyrie Irving returning from a torn ACL, Klay Thompson, and a solid frontcourt with Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II. This isn’t a bare roster. It’s a team with real pieces around a generational young player, and May is being handed the keys to build it from here.

The Draft Confirmed It

The Mavericks held two first-round picks going into draft night, and they didn’t waste either one.

At No. 9, they took exactly who you’d expect from a coach who just spent two years building a championship program around those same players. Dallas selected Morez Johnson Jr., the 6’9″, 250-pound forward who was one of May’s cornerstones at Michigan. Johnson averaged 12.8 points, 10.4 rebounds, and 2.1 blocks per game this season while shooting over 60 percent from the field.

All three of May’s Michigan big men went in the lottery. Johnson at No. 9 to Dallas. Lendeborg at No. 11 to Golden State. Mara at No. 12 to OKC. Johnson will now reunite with his college coach, pairing with Cooper Flagg in what could be a genuinely intriguing frontcourt for years to come.

The pick drew mixed reviews. ESPN called it a culture-setting choice, pointing to Johnson’s elite motor and defensive versatility as a natural fit alongside Flagg’s intensity. CBS Sports graded it a C+, noting that Johnson’s offensive upside is limited for a top-10 pick and that his outside shooting is largely unproven. Both takes are fair. What isn’t really debatable is the familiarity angle. May knows exactly what he’s getting in Johnson, and Johnson knows exactly what to expect from May.

With the No. 30 pick, Dallas took Arizona forward Koa Peat and immediately flipped him to the Phoenix Suns in a multi-team deal that netted the Mavericks Spanish guard Sergio De Larrea and additional second-round picks. It’s the kind of move a rebuilding team makes when it needs to stack future assets while still adding a young piece it believes in. Dallas also used a second-round pick (No. 56, acquired from the Lakers) on Russian guard Vsevolod Ishchenko, a 6’8″ shooter with guard skills and some long-term upside at that price.

What Michigan Loses

This is where the college basketball fallout gets genuinely complicated. May’s departure comes at one of the worst possible times on the offseason calendar. The transfer portal has long since closed for most programs. Michigan’s incoming recruiting class, ranked No. 4 nationally, and transfer class, ranked No. 12, were all built around May’s continued presence.

Under NCAA rules, once Michigan officially announces a new head coach or interim coach, players have a 15-day window to enter the transfer portal. That window opens five days after the announcement.

The good news for Michigan is that they moved quickly. Within roughly two hours of May’s departure becoming public, ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that assistant Mike Boynton Jr. would be elevated to interim head coach. CBS Sports confirmed the move, adding that Boynton could also be promoted to the full-time position in the coming days or weeks.

Boynton, 44, brings real credentials to the role. He served as Michigan’s defensive coordinator for the past two seasons and was previously the head coach at Oklahoma State for seven years, compiling a 119-109 record. He coached Cade Cunningham, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. May himself called Boynton “just as good as I am” at the Final Four.

The strategy here is clearly roster preservation first. An outside hire at this stage of the offseason would have been logistically messy and almost certainly triggered more portal departures. Boynton knows the players, knows the system, and gives Michigan its best shot at holding together a roster that, even with three players now heading to the NBA, was ranked No. 3 in the country in early preseason projections.

The Historical Context

May is just the first college head coach to leave for the NBA since John Beilein, ironically his predecessor at Michigan, took the Cleveland Cavaliers job in 2019. He’s also the last coach to leave immediately after winning a national title since Kansas’ Larry Brown departed for the NBA in 1988. Both of those are remarkable footnotes for a hire that Dallas completed less than 24 hours before the draft opened.

Masai Ujiri prioritized May above other candidates, including Duke’s Jon Scheyer and multiple NBA assistants. The reason sources gave was straightforward: the chance to coach Cooper Flagg was the central factor for May, and Ujiri clearly believed May was the right person to develop him.

Whether this move works for both sides remains to be seen. College coaching success doesn’t automatically translate to the NBA, as Beilein himself found out in Cleveland. But May goes to Dallas with a track record of building quickly, developing talent that reaches the next level, and winning when the stakes are highest. Cooper Flagg could do a lot worse for a head coach.

Michigan could do a lot worse than a national championship in two seasons, even if the man who delivered it just walked out the door.