Дасти Мэй Даллас Мавериксийн дасгалжуулагчаар томилогдлоо

In the fall after Dusty May took Florida Atlantic on a shocking run to the Final Four in 2023, the Atlanta Hawks invited him to attend their training camp. When he returned to FAU, he told his staff he thought he could coach at that level.

For those who know May best, the NBA is where they thought he would always land. In those FAU days, one of his staffers called him “Dusty May Stevens,” referencing the former Butler coach and current Boston Celtics executive, whose practices May used to visit.

“Similar to Brad, the way he thinks (about) the game is ahead of everyone else,” a source close to May said.

On Monday, May followed in Stevens’ footsteps, leaving Michigan to become the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks.

The timing sent shockwaves through the college basketball universe, because May just won a national title and was only two seasons in at Michigan. Not since Larry Brown left for the San Antonio Spurs in 1988 has a coach won a national title and left to coach another team the next year, and Brown’s Kansas program was going on probation that next year. May rebuilt a top-five roster this spring and would have had a chance to repeat.

May, 49, was also as good as it gets at navigating the new age of college basketball — from recruiting the transfer portal to fundraising and coaching what feels like a new team every year — but according to sources close to him, granted anonymity for their candor, that grind wore on him this past year.

“I think the lack of structure in college basketball/athletics was beginning to frustrate him — no guardrails and not having any visible solutions in the near future,” one of the sources said. “This thing that we have going on in college basketball, you’re going to keep losing these dudes like that, man. The really good ones are going to keep going because it beats you down. … You’re fundraising or meeting with agents or traveling, it’s hard for somebody like him who loves ball to be consumed with all the other stuff all the time.”

Recently, May referenced a sign that hung in Bob Knight’s office that read something like, “just coach your team.” The lesson May learned as a student manager for Knight’s Indiana program was to worry about the things that impacted winning and impacted his players and their growth and development. Everything else had to be put on the back burner.

That had proven difficult, especially after winning a national title. I followed May out of Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on the night he won the championship, and he spent most of the walk back responding to the 1,001 unread messages on his phone, looking for messages from recruits. Since that night, he has been on the road more than ever, spending two or three days in a row in Ann Arbor between trips across the country for recruiting or fundraising.

“You could kind of see the frustration and fatigue in the last year,” a source said. “You’ve been around him. He’s always on the go. Like he’s never tired. He’s always moving. … It’s just been nonstop where you reach the pinnacle and you don’t even get a chance to really enjoy any of it.”

What May loves about coaching is the basketball and the relationships.

“That’s always going to be at the core for him,” another source said. “He wants to coach ball.”

Our @GoodmanHoops talked with Dusty May just 4 days ago and asked him if he’s frustrated with the college basketball landscape:

“The actual games and profession is sustainable, but it’s just a low quality of life for most of the people involved because of the uncertainty and… pic.twitter.com/9pIGMTL2ly

— The Field of 68 (@TheFieldOf68) June 22, 2026

May has always broken up his workday by studying other teams, something he called “recess.” This spring, he was doing what he called a season autopsy, rewatching every one of Michigan’s games in reverse, trying to get through at least one a day.

May is happiest when he’s nerding out on basketball. Last month, I moderated a virtual coaching clinic with May. He got more excited talking about the nitty-gritty details of the game and how he learns more than anything else, giving the example of how he ended up using 6-foot-11 Danny Wolf as a ball handler in a 4-5 pick-and-roll during his first season at Michigan. It happened by accident in practice when the Wolverines tried to set up a baseline out-of-bounds play where Wolf caught the ball at the elbow and center Vlad Goldin set a ball screen. Wolf got knocked off his set and pushed out to beyond the 3-point line, and he set the ball screen up like a 5-foot-9 point guard.

“It was like an epiphany moment,” May said.

May loves the puzzle and proved able to adapt when he made the move from FAU to Michigan. At FAU, he built his program by usually playing four guards. This past season at Michigan, he started three big men. His plan going into the year was to run an offense similar to Gonzaga and Arizona’s, a system famous in Europe.

“We had intentions of playing in that shape,” May said during the clinic. “And because of the creativity of our players and because we were able to figure some things out on the fly, we didn’t end up doing that.”

That made Michigan more unpredictable. That led to a national title.

In college, that’s only a part of the job. In the NBA, that’s most of the job.

Another telling moment came this spring when May hired international coach Mody Maor to his staff. Maor, who was a head coach in Japan this past year, told May that he loved helping players improve and was looking forward to getting back to working more one-on-one with them as an assistant. That resonated with May because he felt like he was getting less and less time to do that at Michigan due to all of the demands of the modern college basketball head coach.

That’s why May was likely bound for the NBA if he got the opportunity. And May has had a few years to think this through. His name started to surface in NBA circles after the FAU Final Four run.

The last time I talked to May was on June 4. He had just gone through customs in Miami, where he was spending a few days visiting the Heat. His son, Jack May, works in the video room there. May has visited regularly the past few years and is friends with Heat coach Erik Spoelstra.

Those trips were his recess. Now he gets to live that life.

And he gets to live it with a franchise that has one of the best young players in the NBA in Cooper Flagg, with a team president in Masai Ujiri who has built a champion before (with the Toronto Raptors) and has an eye for identifying talent.

After May left Miami, he said he was hitting the road that next Tuesday to start recruiting.

“Back at it,” he said then.

At that point, he was still committed to coaching Michigan. But in recent weeks, the NBA interest picked up, and over the weekend, when this opportunity with this star became a real possibility, May decided to keep following the path of Stevens.

He’s proven himself at the college level. Now it’s time to see if he can prove he was right that he can coach in the NBA.