Dan Hurley has insisted his talks with the Los Angeles Lakers had nothing to do with creating leverage in his contract talks with UConn. Hurley said his new contract with UConn was already in place.
“One of the worst takes I’ve heard is that this is a leverage play by me to improve my situation at UConn,” Hurley said on the The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. “I don’t need leverage here. We’ve won back-to-back national championships at this place. This was never a leverage situation for me.
“I’ve had a contract in place here for a couple of weeks. And the final part, in terms of salary, has been done for a while. There are some other parts, like NIL and staff salary and some different things, that I want adjusted and I’m not comfortable with. But the sense of the idea that this was some conspiracy to get me a sweeter deal at UConn is just, it’s lazy.”
Hurley said it would have taken a more significant financial offer from the Lakers for him to leave UConn.
“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.
“This wasn’t like some pressure tactic to make me the highest-paid college coach. That was already done. But to leave a place that you feel the way we do and the family connection with my wife, my sons, my mother-in-law, my father … I know how much it means to my dad to go to the Big East tournament and come to 10 UConn games a year at home, sitting courtside, when I’m coaching against Rick Pitino. To leave all of that behind, there probably is a number.”
Hurley found the Lakers’ offer tempting due to the history of the franchise.
“It’s something I wanted to explore,” he said. “The opportunity to potentially coach the Lakers and to coach one of the greatest players of all time and to coach one of the best players in the NBA in [Anthony Davis] and to lead such a storied franchise and to walk the sidelines where some of the greatest to ever to do it — Pat Riley and Phil Jackson — [coached]. It was something in my mind that I had to explore and consider and see what it looked like.”