One of the best young coaches in college basketball finally got some time off. But not until after securing a roster good enough to win a second consecutive national title.
Not that Dusty May is thinking about that. In fact, the Michigan basketball coach thinks it’s irresponsible for his team to focus on the next title. Mostly because his team didn’t win the title last season. Last season’s team did.
Yes, he’ll admit, the goal is the same in the end. And, yes, he said recently, the team he put together for the upcoming season is “not far off, from a talent point,” which means he knows he has the pieces to win it all again.
He also knows he has the process. Not so much the playbook for organizing the pieces on the court – that is fluid depending on who is on the court – but the playbook that connects players off it.
May said similar things about the talent level on his team before last season started. What he didn’t know was how the talent would come together. Just as he doesn’t know that now about next season’s group. He has a better idea of what helps, though.
That, more than anything, is what he learned from U-M’s run to the NCAA championship in April.
“I do think it gives validation for the way we do it,” he said recently when I caught up with him over the phone, “for the collaboration.”
Curiosity is fundamental to his collaborative process, and he has had it for as long as he can remember. Consider this recent quote from a May interview with The Athletic, a quote he reiterated when we talked:
“I think sometimes whenever you win, like we did this year, you think you have the secret sauce or the formula,” he said. “We’re never going to be a program that’s playing the same way 30 years from now as we do today, just because that’s what we know.”
Or a program that plays the same way a year from now. May could’ve said that, too. Look at the difference between his first team at U-M and his second. They didn’t just run different actions, they carried themselves differently on the court.
And now May is ready to change again.
Year 3 brings a new approach
Gone is the 6-foot-9 point-power forward, Yaxel Lendeborg, along with the 7-4 center, Aday Mara, and the 6-9 power forward, Morez Johnson Jr. They made up the best frontline in college basketball – the most unique front line, too.
No player in the game combined Lendeborg’s size, speed, defense, and ball-handling.
His switchability defensively and versatility offensively gave May the kind of hand no one else could play. Mara gave him that kind of hand, too, a rim-protecting giant with soft hands and nimble feet.
May has replaced most of that size through the transfer portal and through traditional recruiting, and the incoming bigs will help determine the ceiling of his third team in Ann Arbor. Still, he couldn’t replace their uniqueness.
The reason the Wolverines might nevertheless be good enough to win a second natty is because the strength of his next squad will be found in the backcourt, and that will require rethinking.
Rethinking is a synonym for learning, of course; a central reason May got into coaching. He is a seeker – only now he is a seeker coming off a national championship.
“I think when you look at a lot of teams coming off successful years, they keep doing what made them successful,” he 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.”
Learning is everything for May. The more he learns, the more he teaches, the more he teaches, the more effectively he learns how to pass along information.
Take last week, for example, when May could’ve paid for movers to load up his son Charlie’s belongings and shipped them from Ann Arbor to Athens, Georgia. Maybe most coaches coming off a national championship would’ve opted to outsource the heavy lifting.
Not May. He chose to help his son rent a trailer, hitch it to the back of his vehicle and take a road trip. Life is fast. A cross-country trek can slow it down.
Besides, the elder May didn’t just want to spend time with his son; he wanted the experience.
A hoops trip across the country
After dropping his son in Athens, where he was set to begin life as a graduate assistant with the basketball program at Georgia (after playing at U-M), May had planned a trip to Turks and Caicos with his wife, Anna – his first break since he cut down the nets in Indianapolis back in early April.
There would be beaches. Waves. Seafood. Quiet. In theory, it sounded relaxing. Then again, May struggles to relax and predicted he would almost certainly find ways to work while on the islands.
After his “vacation,” May planned on traveling from the islands to Miami, where another son, Jack, works in the video room for the Miami Heat. This wasn’t just a family visit, either. It was a chance to recount the season with Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and talk about drills and look at some film and pick up notes.
From there, May was supposed to travel to Charlotte, North Carolina, where – you guessed it – he had set up more meetings and more film sessions and more time in the gym with the staff of the Charlotte Hornets.
He planned on watching workouts, discussing trends, and checking in with the NBA playoffs. He was particularly enamored with the San Antonio/Oklahoma City Western Conference finals, where the level of play and competitive spirit, he said, “was inspiring.”
“Everyone knows our game has not been in a great place, and a lot of us haven’t felt great about the way our game has changed,” he said. “But what’s happening with the Spurs and the Thunder is great for our game.”
The way they compete, for one. The way they move and share the ball, the way they move without the ball.
The same could be said for the New York Knicks, who were set to open the NBA Finals in San Antonio on Wednesday, June 3.
And the same could be said for May’s Wolverines, whose play – at least in spirit – wouldn’t look out of place in these NBA playoffs.
“You watch our team and none of them had great individual statistical seasons,” May said, comparing the unselfishness of his team to what he is seeing right now at the next level. “Our guys were about the right things.”
He is banking that his next group of guys will be about the right things, too. In fact, he is counting on it. He has good reason to.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dusty May has another title-worthy roster with Michigan basketball
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
