New UNC Coach Made Impact
During His Time As SHP Pirate

Bob Farrell has the utmost confidence in the abilities of Michael Malone to get the job done when it comes to meeting the expectations of the ardent University of North Carolina basketball fans.

The legendary Seton Hall Prep coach, who won 777 games and numerous county and state championships in 34 seasons at the helm, was recently presented a Lifetime Achievement Award by the New Jersey Basketball Coaches Association.

During his illustrious coaching career he also helped teach a few valuable lessons to the brand-new UNC coach when the latter played for the Pirates nearly four decades ago during his junior and senior high school seasons.

Michael’s dad, the late, longtime college and NBA coach Brendan Malone, had moved his family to West Orange when the elder Malone transitioned from being the head coach at the University of Rhode Island to becoming an assistant for New York Knicks coach Hubie Brown.

Brendan Malone, who had a wide-ranging career including as an assistant to Jim Boeheim at Syracuse and later with Brown, Bob Hill and Rick Pitino with the Knicks. His journey helped set the tone for what has also been a successful coaching career for his son who spent 24 years in various roles as both an assistant and head coach in the NBA, including guiding the Denver Nuggets to their first NBA championship in 2023.

Turn the calendar back 35 years from the glories of capturing a title at the highest level in the sport and Michael Malone was a hard-working senior guard for Seton Hall Prep in the 1987-88 New Jersey high school hoops season when he completed his second season with the Pirates after transferring from Worcester (Mass.) Academy.

It was not always easy for the precocious pupil and his highly-regarded SHP coach; however, the story would include many more chapters and eventually develop into what has become a lifelong friendship between the two as they exchange text messages and occasional phone calls.

“Mike was a fierce competitor, very demanding of himself and his teammates, and he was certainly headstrong as a player,” recalled Farrell. “He just wanted to win and didn’t care if he scored or not as long as the team did well.

“I remember one time we were working on our halfcourt offense and he didn’t run the play I had called for him and I threw him out of practice and also sat him for our next game which was against Shabazz.

“His dad and mom came to that game not knowing their son was not going to play that night, which I think was quite the embarrassment for Mike, but Brendan never said a word to me about it.

“We continued on with our season and that was that, but you always knew that Mike was very serious about his love for basketball.”

Malone also spent time in the summer of 1988 playing for a Garden States Games team directed by former, longtime North Jersey coach Mike Tierney and comprised of top high school players from Essex, Hudson and Union counties.

“Mike was a highly-skilled and fundamentally sound player who loved to compete and was a great teammate for the other kids on the team,” said Tierney, who was the head man at Parsippany, Bloomfield, Millburn and West Essex. “We also had Mike Shannon and Ira Bowman from Seton Hall Prep on our team and they were all well prepared by Coach Farrell for whatever came along.

“Mike’s dad had great connections in the area with people like Richie Adubato, who also coached in college and in the NBA, and Joe Dooley who had a long stint at Kansas, and you could sense that Mike would also gravitate to what his dad was doing and like him he has become a terrific coach.

“Being a big Tar Heels fan, I’m thrilled that they have chosen Mike to lead the North Carolina basketball team into the future!”

Indeed, the younger Malone, who turns 55 in September, appears more than ready to make the move back to the college game where he hasn’t been since the 1990s when he had stops along the way as an assistant at schools such as Oakland University in Michigan, the University of Virginia, Manhattan College and at Providence College where he worked alongside highly-regarded coach Pete Gillen.

“Like his dad he’s ‘a basketball lifer,’” said Farrell. “And, in now making the jump from the pros to college I think he’ll know how to get the job done and have much success as long as he has everything at his disposal, which I believe he will have at Carolina.

“He’ll make sure that he has what he needs to fit his schemes, learn about the portal which is such a big part of the college game now, and I also think he’ll get the proper people around him to help in the transition.”  

The last time North Carolina went outside the family to hire a coach was back in 1952 when another New York native Frank McGuire was lured away from St. John’s to take over the reins of the Tar Heels.

The UNC basketball ‘family’ started with former McGuire assistant and later legendary head coach Dean Smith and continued with Smith’s longtime right-hand man Bill Guthridge, who took over when he retired, and then former Smith player Matt Doherty,, who had a brief and not very successful run guiding the Tar Heels, followed by Roy Williams who coached three NCAA championship teams (2005, 2009 and 2017) and then – most recently – Hubert Davis, who directed the Tar Heels to the 2022 NCAA final where they lost to Kansas; but, the four seasons after that didn’t quite go as well as Carolina fans would want and his 5-year reign ended when he was not retained following his team’s disappointing, season-ending, first-round to Virginia Commonwealth in this year’s NCAA tourney.  

Malone made it a point during his April 7th introductory press conference in the Dean E. Smith Center to pay tribute to the Carolina family and the basketball program’s rich tradition, including wearing a ‘DES’ pin on his lapel in tribute to coach Smith.

And, he does in fact have some existing connections to UNC. His daughter Brittany is a player on Carolina’s women’s volleyball team. This past fall, while visiting the campus while taking in some of Brittany’s volleyball matches Malone also was invited by Hubert Davis to observe a few UNC basketball practices.

He has a good rapport with Roy Williams and his wife Wanda, and has a longtime friendship with Tar Heels assistant coach and former UNC player Pat Sullivan, who was a schoolboy star at Bogota High School in New Jersey, and also spent some time as an assistant coach in the NBA.

Malone also coached former North Carolina stars, including Antawn Jamison and Danny Green, when he was an assistant with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

His appreciation and knowledge of talent  goes beyond the U.S. borders as he has also developed good connections with the European basketball scene, including with one of the sport’s greatest players, Denver Nuggets’ Serbian-born star center Nikola Jokic, who is a 3-time NBA MVP.

“At one point when speaking to Mike I had wondered just how good Jokic could be in the NBA, but Mike never had any doubts about him,” said Farrell. “And, he even spent time one summer with Jokic, riding horses while really getting to know him and his family better.

“Mike develops great relationships with his players and I think that will also be the case at North Carolina as he begins the next step in what has already been a very successful coaching career!”