John Fanta, College Basketball on FOX Reporter

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Go to TuneIn.com or download the Tune In app to start listening. Kind enough to join us. He had a lot of good stuff with us on Friday and Jon Fanta joins us once again on the Zach Gelb show. Jon, appreciate it. How you been, my man?

Zach, I'm doing well. It's great to be with you. As I talked to you seconds ago, UConn has put out official statements from Dan Hurley and David Bendix. If you want me to give you those statements here right off the bat, Hurley saying, I am humbled by this entire experience. At the end of the day, I'm extremely proud of the championship culture we've built at Connecticut.

We met as a team before today's workout. Our focus right now is on getting better this summer and connecting as a team as we continue to pursue championships. UConn AD Dave Benedict saying that they are thrilled by Hurley's decision and grateful for his loyalty. He says in a statement, as we navigate the rapidly evolving college athletics landscape...

I think it's interesting that he said this, Zach. Your donations more than ever will be necessary to sustain our success. The continued financial commitment from loyal and new donors to both departmental operations and NIL activities will be paramount to remaining competitive on the national stage. That's really interesting language as I join you for a release that's sent right off of a coach recommitting to his school, to the place that he's been at. Because as UConn tries to get this deal done with Dan Hurley, he does not have a new contract that's signed and done. It's going to be interesting to see how that process goes because earlier before Hurley said he was staying at UConn, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont told reporters that it is their goal to make Hurley the highest paid coach in college basketball, that he would like to do that. Well, this past November, two-time national champion Hall of Famer Bill Self signed a five-year, $53 million deal with the first season, 2023-24 this past year.

Self got paid $13 million. So Lamont said that publicly. Hurley stays.

Now Benedict makes a no to donors in a public release. Now the question for UConn and Connecticut is going to be how are they going to be able to reach the point where they give Hurley the deal that he deserves, the deal that he would like? Yeah, it's a good point and we haven't talked about his contract. So they obviously made him a very respectable offer from what has been out there and he didn't take it and then the Laker stuff comes out and a lot of us are thinking, oh, maybe he's going to take the Lakers job. How long of a process do you think this is going to be? Because when you turn down the Lakers deal, which was reportedly for Moshe $70 million over six years, it makes you think that, okay, he was just going to take what was out there from UConn, but you're saying this could be a little bit of a longer process than what people would assume.

Well, I think it's been a longer process already than what anybody would assume. I mean, it's surprising to begin with, take the Lakers aside, that we'd be talking right now on June 10th and the head coach of the back-to-back national champions and the school wouldn't have that done. But Zach, I think that there's a couple of things to look at with these variables here that went into this decision because Friday I came on your show and told you what I was talking with sources on good authority about and I'll say the sources that I still trust very much. Dan Hurley was given a very nice offer by the Lakers. It was not $100 million, it was $70 million. In this process, I'll admit it, nobody wants to admit it, you're not going to bat a thousand because you're going through a bunch of people for a bunch of different pieces of information.

Now, who's to say that if Hurley started to win, it couldn't get there, but that point stands. I think as you're going throughout the weekend, Zach, this did not come without serious thoughts and serious deliberation from Dan and his wife Andrea. And the first step of that was, it's really hard to stop the ball from rolling when you made the decision to fly all the way out to the West Coast and to meet with those people Friday night, which he did. And I was told that those meetings, those talks went very well.

And Adrian Wojnarowski reported that last night as well publicly on the finals pregame show that those talks went very well. At the end of the day, I think what this comes down to is what we're also discussing with the contract, Zach. Dan Hurley in Los Angeles would be going into the job still not fully knowing the answer, because you don't know it until you get into it, of how much control would he really have? How much control would he really have? Whereas in Storrs, Connecticut, he has all of the control in the world and has the unlimited power to just get the governor of the state to say, we'll make him the highest paid college coach at a school that doesn't have football money.

Not the football money that the big time football schools have where they're in conferences. So I think at the end of the day, you don't mess with Happy. You take what you're going to get. You've built a top five roster. You convinced Alex Caravan to come back for this venture. I think that that personal relationship really did play a factor in this. And he has achieved college basketball nirvana. And Zach, he will continue to be the face of college basketball for the foreseeable future. You and I both know in the NBA, coaches are not the faces, the players are.

John Fanta here with us. When you get into the control part of it, and you talked about how he would still not know how much control he would have, when that came up in conversations, and I don't know if you know the answer to this or not with how connected you are, what was Rob Palinko, what was Jeannie Buss saying about the control part of it? Yeah, I'll be candid here. I don't know what exactly was said there.

So I'm not going to guess on that. I think that that's a question that, you know, hopefully Dan answers. I can tell you right now, Zach, you know, for what it's worth, Dan Hurley is going to get on a plane and he's going to fly to MBPA camp and he's going to do some recruiting over the next two days. And then he is going to see the media on Thursday.

So he's going to do media on Thursday. You know, what I can promise you is I'm going to make the drive from New Jersey to Connecticut and get as many more answers on this subject as we can because I think that that's a really important element to this. And I think it's the type of thing that doesn't come out right away.

But it's my understanding fully that those conversations were intense and interest from both sides and very healthy and very productive. It just wasn't meant to be in the here and now. And I think that Zach, one of the things is that, you know, the Lakers have had six different head coaches since Phil Jackson, none of which have lasted more than three years.

And, you know, I think that that weight on Dan, even though, you know, I think he went through the people are saying to me, I can't do it in the NBA. You know, he sees the noise. Excuse me. He hears the noise. He sees what's out there. He's fueled by proving people wrong. And he's only 51.

That day may come. And I still think that that's more than on the table. You're telling me that if the New York Knicks didn't open and had a little bit of interest and maybe a lot of interest in him, you know, what if he wins a third straight then at that point, what else does he have to do?

But I think that it came down to those elements of he was motivated by that. But he looked at the situation that the Lakers were in an organization that because of LeBron James Anthony Davis contract situation, Zach, you look at the rest of that roster. There's a whole lot of unknowns and it's not a championship roster beyond those two. And oh, by the way, we don't even know what what's in LeBron's future. We really do not know what the next step for LeBron is going to be. I know I can tell you that sources told me LeBron was okay with this. His his camp was okay with this because Hurley could develop Ronnie there. That was that was a big thing here that had the potential to occur.

And that's why a lot of the tea leaves were reading. There's real interest here. This has a real shot of happening. Look at the money potentially, but I think it's time as time went on here. Now you let take a look at the money 70 million as a couple of people told me not fully worth it. When you look at some of the unknowns here with the Lakers and some of the other NBA teams, he could potentially could potentially look at here in the future. That's why when we had John the other week, I was just spitball and I said, look at the Monty Williams deal for reference. Like if that ended up being the offer, which was put out there, 70 million dollars over six years. That's an offer that you could refuse when you're Dan Hurley and you're sitting at Yukon, that's a blue blood and you've won back to back national championships. Like they said to whoa Joe, that's our guy.

We were been targeting them all along. When you make that kind of offer and you're the Lakers and we know the coaches salary, is it impacted by the salary cap or anything like that? I actually think it's, I know it's talked about all the top six highest-paid coach in league. It's kind of insulting offer to Dan Hurley, in my opinion. Zach, I thought it was a totally, I really did think it was an insulting offer and that's why I go back to what people that are plugged in in the league were telling me. And oh, by the way, like, and I have immense amount of respect for Woach.

Sure. But he did come out and say right off the bat that the Lakers were putting together a package that was highly, highly lucrative. That this was going to be the most that they had ever compensated the coach. True as that might be here, that was not the expected avenue that anybody, you know, had thought going into this if he was going to become the next head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers.

So let me ask you this. What was your understanding on how everything went down today? Because the moment I saw and I'll raise my hand, I'll be the first one to say when I left Friday, I thought he was going to take the Lakers job. That's what I thought.

I think I said to you it was 85%. But today when that press conference or the practice time gets reported to move back from 12 to 2, as much as I love Hurley, I thought it would have been a really rotten move. When you move everything back, everyone's waiting and guessing on what's going to happen.

And then you tell your kids, hey, I'm not staying. So what's your understanding on how everything played out today? Yeah, well, his wife Andrea and him, they showed up here shortly before that two o'clock practice. He wasn't on campus in the morning.

You know, he wasn't hanging around campus. You know, it's my understanding, Zach, through people that I talked to at UConn, there are a wide variety of people that work with the program, that work within the program that woke up this morning and did not know what was going to happen. And these are people that I trust.

These are people that I have spent a lot of time with in the recent years. They did not know what was going to happen, what he was going to say. Now, Hurley is very calculated. And I said this from the start of this process. He knows exactly what he's doing. That's part of what makes him great.

Honestly, Zach, I love the show. And he knows how to put a show on. And good for him, because we don't have enough of it in college basketball. We're all talking about college basketball on June 10.

That's never happened. In the time that I've talked with you, if I've come on your show this time of year, we're talking NBA draft. It's good to see you. It's good to be talking about it right now.

And maybe we will talk draft in a week or two. But the point is, this is a situation here where he kept this tight to the best. He kept this tight to the best.

And when we were throwing out percentages on Friday, nobody's throwing stuff off the wall. Those were informed things where he was meeting. Things were looking good. It's just the assurances, the financial capabilities now of Connecticut. They're going to have to piece things together here. They're a state school. They're in debt. They've got their own battles.

The Northeast, the family roots, all of that. Again, if they weren't entertained and if they weren't into the idea, then they would not have gotten on a plane and flown to Los Angeles. But I came on your show Friday and said 75-25. 25 is not zero.

75 is not 100 either. And so I think as the weekend went on, Saturday night, I scaled this to 50-50 because I truly think that he contemplated it. I believe that yesterday, Sunday, after he went to Billy Joel on Saturday, took his mind off some things. Might have had an instinct, but I think on Sunday, he came with his family to a decision. His family matters.

His wife Andrea, his sons Andrew and Dan Jr., his father Bob Sr., all of his mother as well, all of these people have a say, have weight in this. And I think for all of them and for his situation, Zach, you know, one thing you got to look at with Dan. Dan has been outspoken about some of the challenges he's gone through in life.

Right? And he's an inspiration to people. People that don't talk about mental health, they've been afraid to talk about it. Dan has not been afraid to talk about those battles. Zach, just over 800 days ago, he lost to New Mexico State in an embarrassing loss in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Some people were calling for him, doing this, that, they were really criticizing him. He changed some things. He dug deep. He looked at life.

He looked at the challenges. Two years later, he's had one of the most remarkable rises in the history of college basketball. That happiness, that money, the convenience factor, doesn't have to get up and move everybody. His parents have lived in the same home for decades and decades. And his father could have had a lot of jobs too, and he stayed.

But they couldn't have gone, you know, not that they couldn't have stayed there, but it would have been harder to get out to LA every now and then. Situationally, family-wise, the fact that Zach, he's got a blue blood in the palm of his hand now. Yeah, and here's one more thing that I'll bring up to you, John Fanta, just from a coverage standpoint. And I thought, because, right, people were wondering what was the state of the Big East going to be all those years ago. And then we know what Villanova did, and we know what UConn has done. But I always say this about college coaches.

That's what gets, really, the sport going. And we know the personalities that used to be in the Big East. But you look at the last three, four years, Shaka Smart goes to Marquette, Jay Wright retires, Sean Miller returns to Xavier, Thad Motta returns to Butler, the whole Ed Cooley thing with Providence and going to Georgetown, Patino coming into the Big East with St. John's, and now Dan Hurley turning down the Lakers. Man, this is, I've never seen anything like this the last three, four years with all those storylines. Zach, the Big East is on fire right now.

It's got its most drama since the 80s and 90s. Dan Hurley and Rick Patino are rivals. That's a good thing. UConn, St. John's matters again.

That's a good thing. And oh, by the way, this all comes while the Big East is in negotiations for a new television contract. You think Dan Hurley staying at UConn helps the causes, helps the dialogue?

You bet it does. So him staying at Connecticut, UConn, I just wrote this for FoxSports.com, and I know I'm working for the company that works with the Big East on their TV primarily, but Connecticut is going to be on big broadcast TV every weekend, if not almost every weekend through conference play. That matters too. Hurley's not lost.

We could talk about the ESPN, this is a whole separate thing, and how they cut off the Big East in 2013 when the conference breakup happened, but the Fox platform for UConn matters because they get on big broadcast TV almost every weekend. More than any other program really, I would say, in college basketball with all those exposures. Hurley's going to be the king of that. He's going to be the king of that. He's going to be desired by any MTE. He's going to be desired by any TV partner. During a time where Jay Wright, Roy Williams, Coach K have said goodbye, somebody had to say hello and bet on college basketball. Now of course he's going to get paid, but Hurley's loyalty to the sport today is college basketball's biggest win in quite some time, especially when you consider how chaotic the sport is in the offseason. Perfectly said. Last thing I'll ask you, Jon Fanta, is always great when he joins us. There's a lot of reasons why maybe you didn't take it like we talked about. Right now you're out of blue blood and you have it humming and you won back-to-back national championships, the offer only being $70 million and it not being an offer you can't refuse.

We talked about the control element as well. What do you think is the number one reason why Dan Hurley right now is not off to LA to go coach the Lakers? He has total control at UConn and there's zero guarantee that you're going to have anything close to that in the NBA.

Not even that it's not just the Lakers, it's just the style. And the man has pictures of John Wooden in his office. If he can say, myself and John Wooden are the only two coaches in men's college basketball history to win three consecutive national titles, which is impossible, UConn is number two in my preseason top 25. Zach, if he says that, start building the statue because it'll go up very soon. He is Jon Fanta of Fox Sports. Jon, always appreciate your insight and your passion. Thank you for doing this again. Zach, fun to talk with you at midnight, late at night during this process. This was a wild ride, my friend.

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