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Hubert Davis may be feeling guilty when he shouldn’t be.
Depending on how this basketball season ends, Davis might regret some of the moves he made, or didn’t make, and maybe some things he said. For instance, why the program is going to hire a general manager.
During that revelation, he said, “The old model of Carolina basketball doesn’t work anymore.”
I, for one, thought “ouch” because he may have felt disloyal to his hero and mentor Dean Smith, who built the model that worked for more than 30 years. And, if Smith coached in the NIL era, he would not have liked paying players but surely would have found a way to use it and help his program.
When asked to elaborate during the weekly ACC teleconference why he is hiring a general manager – nothing about the Carolina model – Davis ducked the question uncomfortably. Maybe it added salt to the wound he felt with that first reason he gave.
UNC Basketball Coach Hubert Davis was asked on the weekly ACC Coaches’ Call this morning about what he recently said about adding a GM role for the program. His response is below: pic.twitter.com/n5euphUy68
— Tar Heel Illustrated (@HeelIllustrated) February 17, 2025
Davis is in his dream job, even if he never went to bed with thoughts of coaching the Tar Heels dancing in his head. And as this season has been rocky, somewhat like two years ago, he has another reason to feel guilty. He wants to represent his school the way Smith and Roy Williams did, not like the 2023 season and this one so far.
If it’s about changing the model of “student-athletes” who stayed for three or four years, Davis has to share that result with the university, which did not embrace NIL early enough and is just now coming up with the money to land some of the best players in the country and keep pace.
For that reason, as I have written in this space, Hubert should get a fifth season regardless of how this one ends. Hiring a general manager is probably something he could have done already, but he may have been naïve as to how NIL changed the game and the extra time it would take.
Early on, he likened it to endorsements he booked when starring for the contending New York Knicks and the deals he lost after being traded to a far worse Dallas Mavericks team. He told the Tar Heels if they play well, win a lot of games and make a post-season run, NIL opportunities would come. That was wrong because NIL is primarily based on potential that turned into a recruiting game won by schools with the most money.
Coming to that realization, it probably took a few years to sink in for an inexperienced head coach, and now he is following what Duke and most other power conference schools have done in getting competitive with NIL.
The bigger question now is who will help him pick the GM, and does it have to be a Carolina grad? Whether he is or not, vet carefully and hire the best man for the dadgum job.
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Featured image via Todd Melet
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
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