Michigan basketball just lost the best coach it ever had. The proof is in the trophy. And in the record, the margin of victory, the eye test: No team ever played basketball in Ann Arbor like that.
So, yes, it stings, more than stings, actually. Dusty May wasn’t just a great young coach who won; he was a great young coach who understood the system and bent it to his needs. And he was yours.
That’s one way to look at May’s leaving. Here’s another:
He had to take the Dallas Mavericks’ offer. Had to. It’s how he’s wired. Keep moving or drown. Not that he was drowning in Ann Arbor.
Well … yeah, he was a little, and you could hear it in his voice when he talked about life after winning the national championship, about how he felt the same, and that he was on to recruiting and preparing for the next season within hours of ending the last one.
That “last one” was among the best in recent college basketball history, and certainly the most dominant in Michigan basketball history. What May took from his team’s 37-3 romp through the college game last season was validation of his process.
The inclusiveness. The calm. The way of processing information. The way of teaching information. It worked. He had a strand of net to show it. He wanted to see if it could work at the next level.
This is a coach who recently hired an assistant because he liked the way the assistant talked about screening angles in transition offense. He heard the assistant discussing those angles on a podcast. He made a mental note. He brought him to Ann Arbor.
That’s a tough blow for the new assistant Mody Maor, but whether he stays in Ann Arbor is beside the point; Maor knew the risks. What’s instructive is that May took a chance on Maor, who’d never coached in the college game, or any level of basketball in America. He liked Maor’s brain. He thought Maor could bring something new.
It’s why May spent so much time watching basketball when he wasn’t spending time with his team or preparing for an opponent. He watched the pro game whenever he had a moment. He talked about that obsession, too.
Shoot, just last month, he finally took some time off to drive in a U-Haul with his son, Charlie May, to move him to Athens, Georgia, and to spend a few days in Turks and Caicos with his wife, Anna, and it all sounded meaningful and relaxing. But then he ended that trip by hanging out with Heat coaches in Miami and Hornets coaches in Charlotte, talking about drills, about sets, about the season, about basketball.
He was studying. Absorbing. Collaborating. Breathing.
And now May gets to coach his most talented player yet in Cooper Flagg, the 2026 NBA Rookie of the Year, who can be a first-team All-NBA superstar. The Mavs also have the ninth overall pick in Tuesday night’s first round, and could add a friendly face in Yaxel Lendeborg or Aday Mara.
Dusty May is wired differently
Here is what he told me when we talked about that upcoming trip a few weeks ago:
“I think when you look at a lot of teams coming off successful years, they keep doing what made them successful,” May said. “I don’t mind changes to a lot of things, based on what our team does well, based on our personalities. I still enjoy the learning.”
He is a seeker first, and while that quote above doesn’t say, hey I’m going to the Dallas Mavericks, it revealed, yet again, his wandering, churning mind. This doesn’t mean he wasn’t all in as the leader of U-M’s basketball program, or that he had one foot out the door when he got hired.
It means that he is all at once a grinder and restless, a teacher and a student, a coach who studied basketball wherever it was played, and described the recent NBA playoffs as “inspirational.”
He was meant to be in Ann Arbor just not meant to stay. That would have been too claustrophobic.
That searching, that yearning to evolve, adapt, to change, is why May will have a good chance to win in the NBA, provided he has some talent − the Mavs have reputable leaders in the front office in president Masai Ujiri, who won a title with the Toronto Raptors, and general manager Mike Schmitz.
Surely, NBA money helped too.
That May is gone from Michigan so quickly is a shock, no doubt. And it hurts for anyone who loves the Maize and Blue. But he was a comet, a streak of light, and the clues to his departure were there all along.
He leaves memories that’ll last a lifetime, not to mention a roster with title potential, depending on who stays; U-M solidifying assistant Mike Boynton Jr. as the interim coach should help keep the roster relatively intact.
Even if not, May brought the school its first national title in 37 years. He brought joy and thrills and proof that Michigan basketball can run with anyone. That’s more than most fans get to experience in this sport, just look around the rest of the Big Ten.
Yeah, it hurts. Also, yeah, U-M was lucky to have him. Because whatever happens in Dallas won’t change what just happened in Ann Arbor.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dusty May dropped clues to his departure – they were there all along
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
