North Carolina’s search for its next head coach has landed in an unexpected place, as the Tar Heels intend to hire longtime NBA coach Michael Malone as the school’s next head coach, sources told ESPN.

Malone is an NBA champion from his time with the Denver Nuggets and won 510 games in 12 seasons as a head coach. He’s one of the most respected tacticians in the NBA and has spent the past 10-plus months as an ESPN analyst.

Malone will inherit a Tar Heels team that has been seeking a head coaching replacement for nearly two weeks since firing Hubert Davis.

Malone hasn’t coached in college since he was an assistant coach at Manhattan in 2001. He also was an assistant at Providence from 1995 to 1998 and Oakland in 1994-95.

Malone’s reputation as a coach is high in NBA circles, and having the respect of UNC legends Michael Jordan and Roy Williams played a role in the hire. With college basketball becoming more like professional basketball every year, UNC gets a respected X’s-and-O’s coach who worked in the NBA for nearly a quarter century as a head coach and assistant.

Malone was the head coach in Denver for 10 years, going 471-327 in that time. He has coached 904 games as an NBA head coach, including two seasons with the Sacramento Kings.

UNC previously had been linked to multiple high-profile college coaches, including Michigan’s Dusty May, Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd and Iowa State’s T.J. Otzelberger. But after all three publicly committed to staying at their current schools, the Tar Heels turned to Malone, who led the Nuggets to their only NBA championship in 2023. He was fired by Denver last April and joined ESPN as an analyst one month later.

Davis was fired by UNC on March 24, five days after the Tar Heels squandered a 19-point lead in their first-round NCAA tournament loss to 11th-seeded VCU.

It marked the second straight year that UNC lost its NCAA tournament opener under Davis, who went 125-54 in five seasons coaching his alma mater.

The Tar Heels reached the national championship game in their first season under Davis, losing to Kansas, but failed to advance past the Sweet 16 in each of the past four seasons. UNC won the most recent of its six NCAA championships under Williams, Davis’ predecessor, in 2017.