Dan Hurley: Lakers discussions weren’t about leverage, ‘I don’t need leverage here’

After a whirlwind week which saw him become the reported frontrunner to be the next head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers only to turn down a reported six-year, $70 million deal, UConn head coach Dan Hurley joined The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz to discuss his decision to stay in Storrs.

So what does Hurley make of the last 10 days of his life.

“Wild, man. Just wild.”

Hurley says at the beginning of last week he began having conversations with his agent about what his serious interest level would be in making such a move. So it was really the beginning of last week that he began putting serious thought into whether taking the Lakers job and leaving UConn would be something he would be interested in. And he decided it was an opportunity he wanted to explore.

Hurley says he didn’t talk to LeBron during the process, and Dan notes that it probably would have been hard to take the job without knowing that LeBron would be bought into what Hurley would be looking to do.

One of the big takeaways from the interview was that Hurley says one of the dumbest takes he has seen is that this whole flirtation, if you want to call it that, with the Lakers was all about gaining leverage at UConn. Hurley points out that after winning back-to-back national championships, he doesn’t NEED leverage in Storrs. He notes that he’s had a new deal in the works for a while at UConn, with the financial aspect already being worked out. There are some other aspects, like staff salary and NIL, that he would like adjusted but the idea that this was all some conspiracy to get him a sweeter deal at UConn is lazy. He says this was truly a gut-wrenching decision for him where he was torn on what he was going to do until his self-imposed deadline Sunday night when he went to bed.

To that end, is there a dollar figure that would have convinced Hurley to move across the country and take the reins of the Lakers? Hurley admits that finances as a motivating factor when deciding whether to leave a place is definitely a thing, although he notes that finances as a motivating factor to stay at a place is NOT ever a thing. He says to stay at a place like UConn, it would never have been a financial thing.

One aspect to decisions like these is the impact on families. Hurley’s wife, Andrea, is a noted Jersey girl. So how did she feel about the potential move to L.A.? Was she open to Goin’ Cali, as Jersey icon Bruce Springsteen once sang about?

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