For the first time since 2019, an NBA team is dipping into the college ranks to land its next head coach.The Dallas Mavericks are finalizing an agreement to hire Dusty May away from Michigan, the school May led to a 64-13 record in two seasons and a national championship in April. The decision comes a little more than seven years after the Cleveland Cavaliers hired John Beilein, who was also at Michigan.Beilein’s time in Cleveland famously went poorly. The college lifer struggled to connect with younger players on a rebuilding Cleveland team. During one film session, he allegedly told Cavaliers players they were no longer playing “like a bunch of thugs.” Beilein later said he meant to use the word “slugs,” and he resigned 54 games into his tenure with a 14-40 record.From Beilein to John Calipari to Fred Hoiberg, among others, there’s been no shortage of big-name college coaches who have flopped while trying to transition to the NBA. But NCAA and NBA sources who spoke with The Athletic consistently said they believe that May has what it takes to make the leap.Those sources were granted anonymity so they could speak freely, and “modern,” “collaborative” and “adaptable” were all words used to describe May, a Terre Haute, Ind., native. So was the word “kind,” which might seem strange for someone who got his start working as a student manager for the rough-edged Bob Knight at Indiana.May worked as a student manager under Knight from 1996 to 2000, the start of his three-decade college basketball journey. As an assistant, May had stops at Eastern Michigan (2005-06), Murray State (2006-07), Alabama-Birmingham (2007-09), Louisiana Tech (2009-15) and Florida (2015-18). He got his first head coaching job at Florida Atlantic in 2018, and led the Owls to their first Final Four. That set the stage for May to land at Michigan.The Wolverines were coming off an 8-24 season when they hired May, and immediately saw major improvement. They went 27-10 in May’s first season and tore through college basketball last season with a 37-3 record.Michigan wins national championshipMichael CharlesAll of that helped convince Mavericks decision-makers that May could be the next college-to-NBA success story, like Brad Stevens — who left Butler for the Boston Celtics in 2013 and reached the playoffs in seven of his eight seasons as head coach there — and Billy Donovan — who departed Florida for the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2015.May has a reservoir of coaching experience and is a talented relationship-builder who, at 49, is still young enough to connect with teenagers and early 20-somethings. That’s critical in Dallas, where everything revolves around Cooper Flagg, the 19-year-old reigning Rookie of the Year.