With Davis’ Contract Extension (Into 2030),
Carolina Officials Contemplated “Bigger Picture”
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
This week’s headlines about North Carolina coach Hubert Davis’ contract extension arrived with extraordinarily odd timing.
Davis is in serious jeopardy of missing the NCAA Tournament for the second time in his four seasons as the Tar Heels’ head coach. While a 50 percent participation rate in the Big Dance would be celebrated at many schools, that’s definitely not the case at UNC, which had competed in 43 of the most recent 46 events (93.5 percent) contested prior to Davis’ elevation to head coach in 2021.
Adding to the unusual timing of UNC’s public posting of Davis’ new contract details (including the extension into 2030), as it turned out, the coach and the university actually had privately come to terms many months ago — last summer, in fact. The parties reached an agreement-in-principle last July, and Davis signed the revised deal last December.
While it’s difficult to process some of those details, given UNC’s status as a public university and its related obligation for transparency (private universities have no such duty in most contexts), it’s not as hard to understand the rationale behind Davis’ extension, despite the coach’s four-year roller-coaster ride in the immediate aftermath of coach Roy Williams’ retirement.
The harshest critics in the Carolina fan base, including many who have called for Davis’ dismissal at various times in the past three years, tend to be extremely volatile in nature. They ride their own personal roller-coasters, often reacting — or overreacting — to the last thing that happened. Sometimes that’s the most recent season. Sometimes it’s the most recent loss.
In stark contrast, high-caliber university presidents and athletic directors — the people with actual decision-making ability on such matters — tend to make decisions based on a much broader landscape of factors, on the proverbial “bigger picture,” if you will. Unlike the most extreme fans, they also tend to value evidence, reason, context and perspective over anger, emotion, simplicity and immediacy.
This doesn’t mean Davis’ many critics are wrong about everything. They have plenty of fair, well-supported points on their side.
At the same time, Davis’ many backers have plenty of evidence for their point of view, too, including the following.
1. The Coach K Double Whammy
During Davis’ first season as head coach, in 2021-22, he led Carolina to the national championship game. That’s not an accomplishment that should be taken lightly or easily forgotten. It’s a very difficult bar to reach for any coach, much less a rookie, and Davis did it.
What’s more, the manner in which that up-and-down season unfolded offered a mighty tribute to both Davis’ considerable coaching acumen and his ability to connect with his players.
Many fans had given up on Carolina during that topsy-turvy campaign, during which the Tar Heels spent an uncomfortable amount of time on the NCAA Tournament bubble, but Davis’ players never stopped believing in him, and he pushed a lot of the right buttons, emotionally and tactically, to save that season.
Furthermore, if you’re truly a “bad coach,” there is no way on God’s green earth that you take an unranked team with almost no NBA-caliber talent (Leaky Black did later play in the NBA briefly) and beat a top-10 Duke squad — with at least five future NBA players — led by legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski.
No way. Or “NFW,” as the kids might say.
Yet Davis helped those 2022 Tar Heels do it twice, both times while under the hottest spotlights imaginable. First, Carolina ruined Coach K’s final game — after 42 seasons in Durham — at a jam-packed Cameron Indoor Stadium. Then the Heels sent him into retirement, with a victory over the Blue Devils at the Final Four, which always will rank among the ultimate daggers in the history of a nationally celebrated rivalry.
Again, you just cannot be a “bad coach” and accomplish such things. If anyone suggests otherwise, just remind them that “the Devil is in the details.”
2. UNC’s 2024 ACC Regular-Season Title
At some point, Davis’ harshest critics will suggest that the coach simply caught “lightning in a bottle” during his first season.
If that were the case, he wouldn’t have had such a special third season in Chapel Hill, too.
The 2023-24 Tar Heels, who went on to make the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament (another significant accomplishment), posted the best ACC record (17-3) any school had managed since the conference shifted to a 20-game league schedule in 2019-20. A “bad coach” doesn’t help make that happen, either.
Legendary UNC coach Dean Smith often said he believed that winning a regular-season title was a greater accomplishment than capturing a conference tournament (whose winner is a league’s official champion). His logic was that it’s a bigger challenge to be consistently successful over three months than it is to perhaps get on a roll for (back then) three days.
Over the past 15 seasons, here’s the complete list of head coaches who have won or shared at least one ACC regular-season title: Virginia’s Tony Bennett (six), Roy Williams (five), Krzyzewski (two), Miami’s Jim Larranaga (two), Florida State’s Leonard Hamilton (one), Maryland’s Gary Williams (one) and … Davis (one).
There’s certainly not a “bad coach” on that list. Most of the others, for the record, are either already in the Hall of Fame or on their way there.
3. Signing/Developing NBA-Caliber Players
In college basketball, there is an absolutely undeniable, seven-decades-long connection between signing and developing NBA-caliber players and putting yourself in position to win an NCAA championship.
One essential aspect of Davis’ job description upon his elevation to head coach in 2021 was to revive UNC’s professional talent pipeline. Under Smith, it often was considered the best in the nation, but it had dried up in recent years. When the Tar Heels failed to have a single player selected in 2022 and 2023, it marked their first back-to-back absences in the NBA draft since a three-year drought from 2002-04, just before Williams got things rolling again.
Although many of Davis’ top players (e.g., Armando Bacot, Brady Manek, likely RJ Davis) have not been considered draft-worthy, star forward Harrison Ingram became the first NBA draft pick of Davis’ head coaching tenure in 2024, and it looks as if that upward trend is going to continue.
Davis signed two McDonald’s All-Americans for this year’s Carolina squad, Ian Jackson and Drake Powell, and whenever they depart (possibly after this season), both are expected to be NBA selections, possibly in the first round.
Similarly, UNC’s top signee for next season, five-star forward Caleb Wilson, is a prep All-American with loads of NBA potential.
Carolina also likely will need to sign additional big-time talents from the NCAA transfer portal after this season.
With that in mind…
4. More Support Moving Forward
Nothing happens in a vacuum. Context matters.
While the worst cheap-shot artists tend to forget or ignore such things, fair-minded people — including UNC administrators in this case — don’t.
Whether one wants to describe it as an excuse or an explanation, there’s absolutely no doubt that Davis has not received the same level of institutional support during his four-year tenure as, for example, coach Jon Scheyer has received during his first three seasons leading the Duke program.
Even with some upcoming changes in Chapel Hill, it would be fair to say that the Blue Devils and others have had a three-year head start in this regard, and Davis’ ongoing tenure is being viewed by UNC’s decision-makers through that lens.
Just this week, Carolina announced the hiring of Jim Tanner, a 1990 UNC graduate and long-time sports agent/attorney who has represented former Wake Forest/NBA star Tim Duncan, former Duke/NBA star Grant Hill and more than a dozen former Tar Heels (e.g., Vince Carter, Wayne Ellington, Raymond Felton, Tyler Hansbrough, Justin Jackson, Marvin Williams), among many other prominent athletes and entertainers.
“I am excited and happy to have Jim join our staff and the UNC family,” Davis said. “Jim’s experience and knowledge is needed in helping us navigate contracts, the transfer portal and the advancement of this program. His resumé speaks for itself, and his commitment to this university and community make him a great addition to the Carolina men’s basketball program.”
Carolina, which previously hired general managers for its football and women’s basketball programs, is attempting to respond to the massive, recent changes to the college sports model (e.g., player agents, NCAA portal, immediate transfer eligibility, Name-Image-Likeness compensation) while also preparing for another likely jolt to the system later this year.
If a judge approves the NCAA’s proposed settlement of what’s called the House lawsuit, starting this summer, major college athletic departments will essentially be working with a “salary cap” of sorts for the first time. More than $20 million (per school) from the athletic department’s own revenues will be able to be spread among a university’s athletes in the form of NIL payments, leaving big decisions to be made regarding how to divide such funds among various sports and specific athletes. Third-party NIL money (i.e., coming from outside the university) will remain a big part of the equation, too.
According to UNC’s release, Tanner will, “among other things, help manage the construction of the roster, negotiate contracts, identify and hire new scouting and analytics staff and spearhead player development programs.”
Clearly, it’s a new world in college sports, and Carolina is trying to modernize its approach.
Given Davis’ unique combination of significant successes and obvious failures in the absence of that extra help, UNC understandably concluded that it would be a worthy investment to give him more time — and more assistance — in an attempt to return the Tar Heels to their historically lofty standard.
