Why Dusty May leaving Michigan and college basketball behind in June isn't remotely surprising

It was mid-afternoon on April 13 in St. Louis, one week removed from Michigan winning the national title. Dusty May was head down, texting one person after another and diligently trying to land his second big commitment in the portal. We were sitting in Josh Schertz's office at Saint Louis University. The reason for the unusual setting: May had flown into town that morning to receive the Henry Iba National Coach of the Year award on behalf of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association.

>I was peppering him questions about why winning a national title didn't feel as sweet as he'd hoped or believed it would. May should have been on cloud nine after reaching the mountaintop of college basketball. Instead, he was like every other coach in the country: sweating out each hour of the recruiting process and hopping on multiple Zooms calls every day just to try and not lose pace.

>And here today, in the immediate aftermath of the biggest headline of college basketball's offseason, that 30-minute sit-down reverberates heavily. The news of May going to the Dallas Mavericks arrived in thunderclap fashion on Monday morning, but I'm hardly shocked. He was always going to do this when given the opportunity, it's just that the opportunity came sooner than just about everyone anticipated.

>I remember how May stopped texting and looked up from this phone when I asked him: "Do you think you'll be coaching Michigan in three or four years?"

>"No," he admitted. "I can't see myself doing this for too much longer."

>By that he meant: running a college basketball program when roster prices were increasing by 300% every year. The constant roster churn, the lack of the NCAA's institutional control over college basketball, the way the system stole some of the fervor and celebration windows from Michigan's coaching staff after pulling off one of the best seasons of the past two decades.

>May told me he aspired to coach in the NBA someday. He craved to know if he could do it and felt compelled to eventually find out — especially if the state of college basketball was going to be perpetually chaotic. I left him wondering how long it would take for that day to arrive.

>Forget three years. He didn't even last another three months.

>There's another thing that happened from that day that explains so much of why one of the college game's best coaches is leaving the sport. It took place as I took this picture.

>This is May talking to a highly regarded player in the transfer portal. The player called May, so he popped out of his chair and had to put our interview on pause for a few moments to see what was happening. During his conversation, the player verbally committed to play for Michigan next season. A huge development. When the call was over, I congratulated him, then he chuckled, saying something to the effect of, "Just because he committed doesn't mean he's coming. We still have to deal with the agent."

>The story gets even stranger. This player verbally reinforced his commitment to May two more times in the ensuing weeks.

>That's the portal recruiting experience in a nutshell.

>Scenarios like this are as much of the reason why May wants out as anything. Yes, there is the temptation of the NBA and all that comes with that too, of course. But it was much more difficult to recruit to a national championship-winning program than I think anyone at Michigan thought it would be — even as well-resourced as they are — and so that's why May is taking a chance on himself and going now. He's doing this knowing full well he'd have a very good shot at other opportunities, potentially even better NBA jobs, in 2027 after what would have likely been a successful follow-up season to a national championship run.

>In talking to multiple sources close to May on Monday, I was explicitly told that the state of college basketball played a serious factor in May leaving for Dallas.

>"There's just too much uncertainty in college athletics," one source said. "Parents are relentless, calling and checking in, doing what they do. Every day it's dealing with shit. And there are hundreds of coaches doing what they think is best for themselves, not what's best for the game."

>May met with Mavericks leadership over the weekend and eventually agreed to the deal after some internal back-and-forth over whether to leave his roster almost three months into the offseason. I'm told it was extremely difficult to say yes, particularly given Michigan's intense roster churn after winning the title and its reward for doing so: Michigan is widely viewed as a preseason top-five team heading into November.

>We'll see if that remains the case under Mike Boynton, who has been named Michigan's interim head coach, sources said.

>And so Dusty May becomes the latest high-profile, highly accomplished college basketball coach to step away from the game after feeling the stresses and pressure of a sport that has vastly swung in too many different directions in too short of a time to keep many of its best on the sidelines. In chronological order, here's the list of the most notable coaches who have tapped out on account of the change in landscape: Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Jay Wright, Tony Bennett, Bruce Pearl and now May.

>The most recent college coach pursued by an NBA franchise only to turn the offer down is Dan Hurley, who spurned the Lakers in 2024 to stay at UConn. Otherwise, every upper-tier coach in the past five years who has had an escape route out of college basketball has taken it. Bill Self may well be next in less than a year and John Calipari won't be far behind him. Tom Izzo as well. Those will all be retirements, but they'll be on slightly accelerated timelines all the same.

>And if it hadn't been May leaving for Dallas, it would have been Duke's Jon Scheyer. Sources said Scheyer seriously considered the Dallas job but ultimately passed because he feels like there's too much left to accomplish at his alma mater. Sources I spoke with on Monday expressed their opinions that Florida's Todd Golden, Alabama's Nate Oats and Arizona's Tommy Lloyd could all well get their NBA shots — and leave — by the end of the decade.

>Just as we're not surprised about May making the leap. The news of it is jarring, but the why of it is not. We'll see if May is more Brad Stevens than Rick Pitino at the next level. Cooper Flagg might be a top-five NBA player by the end of his rookie deal. May was coaching FAU 28 months ago. This is going to be so interesting.

>And another thing: The fact May was the only coach to ever win a national title with five starters who didn't begin their careers at the school they won said title for might even make this worse. A coach built for the most transactional era ever in college athletics got out as soon as he could because it wasn't worth sticking around for.

>Dusty May climbed that ladder on April 6 and barely spent five seconds atop the platform when he cut down the net. Everything he'd worked for didn't seem to culminate for him then, in that moment. He's chasing something. Maybe he gets it with the NBA. Whatever he's going for, one of the best jobs in college basketball wasn't offering enough to make him stick around for even one more year.

>I don't know if the ballyhooed (and controversial) Protect College Sports Act will or won't do a damn thing to stop the drip, drip, drip-drip-drip of the coaching brain drain in college basketball. I do know May isn't going to be the last big coach to bolt on the sport, not even close. Give it a few more months and we might get another. Today, he's the newest name to go, but soon enough he'll be just another guy on a long list that's symbolic of the most tempestuous era in NCAA history, someone who rightfully got out while the getting was good.