Over the course of Coach K's four decades at Duke, North Carolina only had five head coaches. With Mike Malone now becoming the new head coach in Chapel Hill, Coach K naturally had to weigh in on his arch-rival's new leader.
Coach K was actually right in the middle of an interview with Pat McAfee yesterday when the news dropped that the 2023 NBA champion was reported as the next head coach of the Tar Heels. McAfee couldn't resist taking a little dig at Coach K to see if he could get a rise out of him.
"Is North Carolina about to come back and start smacking Duke around? Uh-oh, Coach K, NBA champion’s coming to town," McAfee teased.
Coach K was more amused than worried though. He joked that the football team hired an NFL champion (Bill Belichick) this past year and it resulted in Duke getting a win over the Tar Heels on the football field.
“Well, they had an NFL champion hired as the coach and Duke beat Carolina in football this year,” Coach K said.
Basketball fans couldn't help but applaud Coach K for taking every possible opportunity to get in a dig at UNC:
"Coach K never misses a chance to troll UNC," one user joked.
"UNC has a thing for hiring Championship winning coaches who are not wanted by their professional sport..." joked another.
"UNC fan here. I normally detest K, but he's somewhat likeable here. I can even take the dig," a third wrote.
© Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images
Belichick & Malone
There's certainly a couple of parallels to be made between North Carolina's hiring of Malone and last year's hire of Belichick. Neither man had ever been a head coach in college and both had only limited work as an assistant coach at the college level.
Belichick never even coached college football prior to embarking on his five-decade NFL career, though his father did. Malone, on the other hand, was an assistant at Oakland, Providence and Manhattan for around a decade before getting his first NBA job in 2001.
Malone paid his dues as an assistant for 12 years before becoming head coach of the Sacramento Kings in 2013 and in 2015 began his run as head coach of the Denver Nuggets, leading them to an NBA title in 2023 and later becoming the franchise's all-time leader in wins..
