Dusty May knew the game, embraced the game and played it brilliantly. In two stirring seasons at Michigan, he balanced the transactional aspects of a rapidly changing sport and became a coaching star. A coveted star.
May made an indelible mark at UM, capping a 37-3 season with a national championship, the Wolverines’ first in 37 years. And once the whirlwind of opportunities started, it wasn’t going to stop. At least not until Monday, when May left Michigan to coach the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.
It’s a crushing blow for the Wolverines, but they knew the cost of success in college basketball’s current climate. It’s a fitting final transaction for May, and the only major surprise is the timing, two months after the season, and after recruiting and portal signings. His top assistant, Mike Boynton Jr., will likely take over as an interim, which gives the Wolverines a chance at a workable transition, with the roster already rebuilt and pegged as a top-five team next season.
May had a new contract agreement with UM but hadn’t yet signed it. The way it appears, that was at least semi-intentional, as he was frequently mentioned as a candidate for the NBA, just like his players, Yaxel Lendeborg, Aday Mara and Morez Johnson Jr. I doubt this was strictly a money issue, although he’ll be handsomely compensated in Dallas. But if there’s more that AD Warde Manuel could have done, we need to hear it.
Just as Jim Harbaugh departed after the 2023 football national championship for a multitude of reasons — NFL lure, ongoing scandal, pending punishment — May apparently had aspirations that Manuel couldn’t fulfill. (No, Harbaugh was never staying at UM amid the NCAA sanctions). May’s contract has already been redone once, and with Big Ten and national titles, his pay topped $5 million this past season. He hauled in a top-five recruiting class and a top-12 portal class, so sustainability and security certainly weren’t issues.
The next-level challenge often is the lure for high-achieving coaches, and May, 49, has displayed extreme ambitions since starting as a student assistant at Indiana. He showed it in six seasons resurrecting little Florida Atlantic and showed it immediately after taking over a UM team that went 8-24 in 2024. He showed it in his roster composition, signing key transfers and molding them into a selfless team as expertly as any college coach ever. The Wolverines went 64-13 in his two seasons, the greatest stretch in program history.
May built a beast, then grappled with that beast. Mere minutes after UM won the championship by beating Connecticut 69-63, the transfer portal opened at midnight, and May could barely bask. The college basketball grind is year-round and unrelenting.
He was in constant demand — for interviews, appearances, fundraising, and yes, for other jobs, including prominent college positions. That option didn’t seem to make sense, with all his resources at UM, and it should soften the pain that he didn’t leave for, say, North Carolina. He always declined to comment on any opening, but he was in tune with the pro game.
The NBA provides an appealing lifestyle for coaches weary of the ever-churning rosters and rules in college basketball. Most who jump don’t last long in the pros, although Billy Donovan spent 11 seasons there after winning two national championships at Florida. He recently stepped down from the Chicago Bulls and immediately became an attractive candidate for the next major college opening — perhaps even at Michigan. St. Louis coach Josh Schertz, a close friend of May’s, also could be an intriguing option.
The last time a successful college coach tried the transition, John Beilein made the ill-fated move to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2019 and didn’t last a full season. Beilein left UM just as his program was getting hit hard by early player departures, which deprived Beilein of the element he loved most — teaching and building.
Tom Izzo is bothered by the same circumstances, lamenting the transactional nature of the college game, with players commanding large sums through NIL and requiring constant recruiting and re-recruiting. He has been tempted several times by NBA opportunities but has stayed 31 seasons at Michigan State, maintaining one of the nation’s consistently successful programs in a wildly volatile sport.
The challenge isn’t changing, and neither is Izzo, 71. That probably contributed to the short, fevered rivalry between May and Izzo, who competed fiercely, sometimes disagreeably. I bet they can agree on one thing — the job is ridiculously taxing, with immense pressure from all angles, at all times of the year.
And naturally, expectations keep rising. When you win one, the hunt for No. 2 can be unfairly haunting, as Izzo has heard the pleas since 2000. Shortly after winning the championship, May talked about the joy, followed by the emptiness, followed by the huge task ahead.
“I’d heard where you climb the ladder and you say, ‘Is this really it?'” May told CBS in April. “And it was worse. It was less than ‘it.’ It doesn’t feel any different.”
May has admitted several times, “It’s almost impossible to enjoy it,” dropping clues, intentionally or not. In the NBA, the job is more clearly defined. Players are bound by contract, movement is limited by the salary cap and coaches mostly manage, while GMs find players. It may be less rewarding for a coach, but it’s less frenetic, not nearly as all-consuming. May has three sons, and Charlie played for UM last season.
In Dallas, May doesn’t have to chase down and lock down his next star. Cooper Flagg, the 2025 No.1 pick from Duke, won Rookie of the Year, and leads a young team that possesses the No. 9 pick in the draft (Mara?).
Back in Ann Arbor, Michigan should be good again, with an experienced backcourt of Elliot Cadeau and Trey McKenney and another batch of lanky transfers. If Boynton, 44, indeed remains, it would help preserve UM’s touted incoming classes. He was 119-109 in seven seasons as Oklahoma State’s head coach, including Cade Cunningham’s lone year. It’s a transition May actually might have been anticipating.
“I have no idea if (Boynton) is going to get another opportunity or when or where, but he should,” May told the media at the Final Four. “He’s an elite basketball coach. … I’m the head coach at Michigan, and he’s just as good as I am. He’s just as prepared.”
Elite coaches don’t automatically follow elite coaches, and Michigan hasn’t had recent success with the interim route (See: Juwan Howard). Even as UM conducts an investigation into its athletic department, Manuel must make another critical decision, and Boynton is the safe move, for now.
Winning big and winning quickly comes with costs, and caveats. It’s a tough development for UM, but it’s hard to blame Manuel for losing the guy he found. It would be surprising — and damning — if this were just about the contract.
You can’t blame May, who never denied (or expressed) interest in any other job, while doing his own job flawlessly. He didn’t build his program on promises of long-term loyalty, and fans and players knew the deal.
You can go ahead and blame the system because it is convoluted and unsustainable. But it’s the same transactional system that UM used for enormous success. Michigan basketball experienced the best two years in program history with May and everyone reaped the rewards, from players headed to the NBA, to fans who headed to the Final Four, to a program that desperately needed a boost.
May made an unforgettable, indelible mark. The challenge for a Michigan program experiencing newfound heights is to make sure it’s a lasting mark.
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