{"id":4495,"date":"2026-02-04T06:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/02\/04\/dusty-may-rejects-mercenary-conception-of-michigan-roster\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T06:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:49:10","slug":"dusty-may-rejects-mercenary-conception-of-michigan-roster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/02\/04\/dusty-may-rejects-mercenary-conception-of-michigan-roster\/","title":{"rendered":"Dusty May rejects \u2018mercenary\u2019 conception of Michigan roster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In his two seasons coaching the Michigan men\u2019s basketball team, coach Dusty May has been no stranger to the transfer portal.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In fact, every Wolverines player to start multiple games in May\u2019s tenure has been a transfer. This year, No. 2 Michigan starts four May-recruited transfers and another from before May\u2019s time: graduate guard Nimari Burnett.<\/p>\n<p>A rivalry matchup with now-No. 10 Michigan State last week was as good a time as ever for rival fans to attack the Wolverines, and the high saturation of transfers among its starters was one target. Spartan fans took the chance to <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MoneybaggMSU\/status\/2016912723745923187?s=20\">villainize<\/a> Michigan\u2019s transfers, insinuating that joined the team for financial reasons in contrast with Michigan State\u2019s largely homegrown lineup. Three days removed from a season-defining <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/no-3-michigan-prevails-in-defensive-slugfest-with-no-7-michigan-state-83-71\/\">win<\/a> for the Wolverines, May pushed back against that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know people outside of our tribe will call our guys these derogatory names, mercenaries and whatnot,\u201d May said Monday. \u201cWe have a group of guys that love playing with each other. They appreciate Michigan, and when you see how connected they are, I don\u2019t know how you would classify them as guys playing just for money when they all sacrificed a great deal of money to do what they\u2019re doing together.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Last offseason\u2019s professional prospects weren\u2019t crystal clear for every Michigan transfer, but graduate forward Yaxel Lendeborg turned down a potential NBA contract to come back to school. And while his players are earning money through NIL while in Ann Arbor, May isn\u2019t a fan of the word \u2018mercenary.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, especially (in) year two,\u201d May said on whether he takes the use of the word personally. \u201c \u2026 I think everyone would rather us just come in and sign a bunch of freshmen and lose and try to grow it organically, but our job from day one was to win, and so we brought in a balanced class.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>May\u2019s freshman classes have been relatively modest in size so far, taking four recruits in each of his first two classes compared to 10 total transfers across both years. The transfer portal might have taken priority, but it\u2019s worked in the Wolverines\u2019 favor.<\/p>\n<p>Former transfers like forward Danny Wolf and center Vlad Goldin were the driving force behind Michigan\u2019s turnaround season last year. This season, the Wolverines\u2019 four leading scores are transfers from this past offseason.<\/p>\n<p>May and his staff are still developing players they recruited like sophomore guard L.J. Cason, freshman guard Trey McKenney and redshirt freshman forward Oscar Goodman. But while Cason and McKenney are contributors to winning now and Goodman shows promise for the future, those underclassmen couldn\u2019t lead a top-5 team on their own. In May\u2019s eyes, utilizing the transfer portal so far has just meant putting his team in the best position to win.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>As the most highly-touted of Michigan\u2019s transfers this year, Lendeborg has lived up to expectations and helped the Wolverines win plenty of games already. But he\u2019s also been a key part of the team\u2019s culture and chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never been around anyone like him and I\u2019m incredibly appreciative of how much he cares about his teammates as well,\u201d May said Monday. \u201cI\u2019ll say it again, he doesn\u2019t act like a mercenary every day. He acts like he\u2019s completely engrossed and embedded in our program, our culture and winning for others.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Culture has been a common theme across May\u2019s comments all season. He\u2019s praised his team\u2019s togetherness and camaraderie, and he\u2019s emphasized how much they enjoy playing together. The players have echoed that sentiment. Although it\u2019s easy for culture to be a buzzword, Michigan\u2019s cohesion has been evident in its play.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On offense, the Wolverines gelled relatively quickly. It didn\u2019t take long for Michigan\u2019s transfers to figure out how to play as a unit and complement each other\u2019s playstyles, scoring 100 or more points in seven of its first 12 games. On defense, too, the Wolverines picked up a switch-heavy scheme dependent on communication with ease, currently ranking as the No. 1 defense in the country per <a href=\"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/\">KenPom<\/a>. It\u2019s hard to do that with a roster of new faces if there isn\u2019t strong culture and chemistry in place.<\/p>\n<p>Michigan currently has several key players who could take the leap to the NBA next year. The Wolverines have four recruits signed to come in as freshmen, and it\u2019s unclear how much May will use the transfer portal next offseason as his own recruits continue to develop. But for now, May wants to make clear Michigan\u2019s transfers aren\u2019t just players for hire.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his two seasons coaching the Michigan men\u2019s basketball team, coach Dusty May has been no stranger to the transfer portal.\u00a0 In fact, every Wolverines player to start multiple games in May\u2019s tenure has been a transfer. This year, No. 2 Michigan starts four May-recruited transfers and another from before May\u2019s time: graduate guard Nimari [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[4240,4238,4239,222,3785,4067],"class_list":{"0":"post-4495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-conception","9":"tag-dusty","10":"tag-mercenary","11":"tag-michigan","12":"tag-rejects","13":"tag-roster"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4497,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4495\/revisions\/4497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}