Celtics' Brad Stevens Reportedly Removes Himself from UNC HC Search After Hubert Davis Firing

Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens reportedly isn't interested in the vacant head men's basketball coaching job at the University of North Carolina.

According to Matt Norlander of CBS Sports, Stevens was at the top of UNC's wish list after the firing of Hubert Davis on Tuesday, but Stevens has already "removed his name from consideration" for the Tar Heels job.

Per Norlander, North Carolina will now turn its attention to other potential options, such as Arizona's Tommy Lloyd, Michigan's Dusty May, Iowa State's T.J. Otzelberger and Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan.

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While Stevens has been part of the Celtics' front office since 2021, he was a highly respected head coach at the collegiate and NBA levels for many years prior.

In six seasons as the head coach at Butler from 2007 to 2013, Stevens went 166-49 and led the Bulldogs to the NCAA tournament five times.

Remarkably, Stevens took Butler to the Final Four in back-to-back years in 2010 and 2011, losing in the National Championship Game each time.

Stevens made the move to the NBA in 2013 when he was hired as head coach of the Celtics. He served in that role for eight seasons, going 354-282 with seven playoff appearances, but he was never able to get past the Eastern Conference Finals.

Upon transitioning into a front office role in 2021, Stevens achieved arguably the greatest success of his career, as he had a huge hand in building the Celtics roster that won an NBA championship in 2024. As a result, Stevens was honored as the 2024 NBA Executive of the Year.

With six all-time national titles, the UNC head coaching job is among the most desirable in all of college basketball, so it shouldn't be particularly difficult to find a quality replacement for Davis even with Stevens dropping out.

The Tar Heels last won a national title in 2017, and they reached the Final Four as recently as 2022 when they fell to Kansas in the National Championship Game.

That was Davis' first year on the job, and it is fair to say that things have gone downhill since then for the program.

UNC didn't even make the NCAA tournament in 2023, and while they bounced back with a Sweet 16 appearance the following year, the past two seasons have been massive disappointments with back-to-back first-round exits.

The last straw for Davis at North Carolina was last week's first-round loss to 11th-seeded VCU. The sixth-seeded Tar Heels led by as much as 19 in the game, but the Rams stormed back to win 82-78 in overtime.

Now, the UNC administration is in search of a new leader to guide the program into the future, but Stevens will not be that person.