Newly hired North Carolina men’s basketball coach Michael Malone already ranks near the top of his profession in one key category.
With a reported six-year, $50 million contract in Chapel Hill, the former NBA head coach will receive an average of $8.3 million per year over the course of the deal. Currently, only long-time Kansas coach Bill Self ($8.8 million) has a higher average annual salary.
Malone’s six-year deal starts at $7.5 million in base compensation and rises to $9 million by the 2031-32 season. Malone can also earn incentives worth up to nearly $1.5 million annually, while he has a buyout that starts at $8 million through April 1 and drops to $6.5 million in 2028 and $5 million in 2029 as it continues to decline over the life of the deal.
Additionally, the agreement requires a $4 million salary pool for assistant coaches and support staff, as well as for the school to commit no less than $6.75 million of its revenue-share allotment to men’s basketball.
Of course, Malone isn’t the highest-paid coach on campus in Chapel Hill.
Head football coach Bill Belichick is on a five-year, $50 million deal, which doesn’t include the $1.3 million his son Steve is being paid to serve as the Tar Heels defensive coordinator.
With a reported six-year, $50 million contract in Chapel Hill, former NBA head coach Michael Malone will receive an average of $8.3 million per year over the course of the deal
Bill Belichick is pictured alongside his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, during his first year at UNC
Malone, who previously won an NBA title coaching the Denver Nuggets, gave his introductory press conference on Tuesday in Chapel Hill.
‘I did not play here. I’m not from Carolina,’ he said at the Dean Smith Center. ‘But I think they’re ready to embrace somebody new. A new vision to try to get this program back to where we all want it to be.’
The Tar Heels hired the NBA championship-winning coach on Tuesday, signing him to a six-year deal worth $50 million in base compensation.
Malone replaces Hubert Davis, who was fired on March 24 after five seasons as the successor to retired Hall of Famer Roy Williams.
The 54-year-old Malone spent 12 seasons as a head coach in the NBA, including a 10-year run in Denver. He led the Nuggets to the 2023 title behind three-time league MVP Nikola Jokic.
The Nuggets fired Malone last spring with less than a week left in that regular season. Almost a year to the day, in another surprise move, Malone took over a blue-blood program with six national titles, a record 21 appearances in the Final Four and alums including Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Vince Carter and Atlantic Coast Conference career scoring leader Tyler Hansbrough.
North Carolina conducted a widespread coaching search after firing Hubert Davis
Kansas’ Bill Self still ranks as the highest-paid basketball coach at the NCAA level at $8.8m
Malone said 10 to 12 former UNC players visited him in his arena office in the few hours after he arrived earlier in the day from Colorado.
Davis’ firing opened one of the top jobs in college basketball for only the fourth time since the late Hall of Famer Dean Smith’s retirement after 36 seasons in October 1997. The job had stayed in the ‘Carolina Family’ ever since. Longtime assistant Bill Guthridge replaced Smith, followed by former UNC player Matt Doherty, former Smith assistant Williams and then Davis, who played under Smith and worked on Williams’ staff.
Malone has never been a college head coach and has spent most of his career in the NBA. His primary connection to UNC athletics is the presence of daughter Bridget on the Tar Heels’ volleyball team. He told the UNC athletic department’s ‘Carolina Insider’ podcast in October that he had attended multiple recent basketball practices — with Davis even asking him to speak to the team at least once.
