Tyler Hansbrough, Danny Green, former UNC stars react to Michael Malone hire: 'We're back on the map'

What several former Tar Heels All-Americans said about the program's new coach

Former North Carolina players are emphatically behind the Tar Heels' hiring of Michael Malone as the program's next basketball coach, marking the first time the powers in Chapel Hill have gone "outside the Carolina family" since 1952.

"This is a great hire. We are going to be back on the map, immediately," former three-time UNC All-American Tyler Hansbrough said Monday on the Field of 68. "This is, in my opinion, an absolutely amazing hire."

Hansbrough also emphasized Malone's mentality and urgency, noting he expects him to come in ready to win right away and maximize resources like NIL support.

UNC's hire of Michael Malone sets a clean slate for the next era of Carolina basketball Chip Patterson

"This is not your typical NBA hire," Hansbrough said. "This is a head coach who is hungry, and I think he's going to do everything he can to get UNC back, and I think we'll be back much faster than what people believe."

Considered a wild-card choice for UNC brass, Malone got the call after Arizona's Tommy Lloyd re-signed with the Wildcats and Michigan's Dusty May removed his name from consideration at the Final Four prior to winning Monday night's national championship game against UConn.

"I couldn't be more excited," Hansbrough said. "This is a brilliant basketball mind, but I think that we're gonna surround him with the current people who have been involved with basketball and know how to navigate this new NIL. And Mike Malone, the ultimate competitor, he's going to figure this out fast. And he's going to have it running."

Danny Green, a former NCAA champion on the Tar Heels' 2009 squad, spoke on Malone's experience at the pro level and longstanding relationships with general managers and scouts as a primary factor in why he'll be an asset in recruiting -- especially the transfer portal.

"He knows what the pros are looking for. What player wouldn't want to play for a coach that knows the NBA level? He's been on that level," Green said Monday on ACC Network. "If you're a kid wanting to come in ... everyone thinks they're a one-and-done for some odd reason, but he can coach you to win and always coach you to get to the next level.

"I think he's going to surprise a lot of people. I'm rooting for him. We're all hoping he'll crush it, and I believe he will crush it because that's who he is and what he's done since I've known him."

Ty Lawson, UNC's starting point guard on the 2009 team, raved about Malone's arrival in Chapel Hill while Kenny Smith -- a two-time NBA champion whose son is committed to the Tar Heels -- emphasized the hire being different.

"That would be 100% favorable for the Tar Heels," Smith said on the pregame show before Monday night's NCAA Tournament finale. "He's a winner. Right away, he has a resume that no one in college basketball has. He's an NBA champion."

Malone last coached the Denver Nuggets during the 2024-25 season, his 10th as Denver's leader, before he was fired last April after failing to meet expectations despite another stellar campaign from multi-time league MVP Nikola Jokic.

Malone is a Queens, New York native who spent the first several years of his coaching career in the college ranks as an assistant at Oakland, Providence and Manhattan before joining the NBA ranks in 2001 with the New York Knicks.

Carolina ties for Malone

This was the first time the Tar Heels conducted an outside search for a head coach since landing Roy Williams from Kansas prior to the 2003-04 season, but Malone is no stranger to the program. He followed the Tar Heels' roster all season, and his daughter is a volleyball player at UNC.

Malone watched the Tar Heels' first five practices last fall before he was asked by then-coach Hubert Davis to speak to the team.

"When we opened up training camp (with the Nuggets), my biggest goal as a coach was finding a way every single day to get better," Malone said on the Carolina Insider podcast in October. "If it's in the weight room, if it's player development or film. … whatever it may be, you have to find a way individually and collectively, find a way to get better. If you find a way to do that throughout the course of a season, you're going to put yourself in a very good position at the end of the year.

"It's so easy for everybody (to say), 'We can win the ACC,' but are you doing what you're supposed to do every day? Did you cut corners in practice or in the weight room? Now you're just talking empty words. We don't want to be an empty team, and I know Hubert Davis and this team is not about empty words."

UNC fired Davis after five seasons on March 19. Losing a 19-point lead in March Madness was too much to stomach at a program that considers itself one of the best in college basketball.