reaching the semifinals\u00a0in Las Vegas<\/a>. <\/p>\nDunn\u2019s professionalism, competitive fire and basketball acumen helped him stick with the Rockets. But his path also involved a self-described \u201clucky break\u201d\u00a0\u2014 more on that in a bit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always kind of a gut check, a character check when your staff gets let go,\u201d he said. \u201c \u2026 You can react a number of different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some people retreat and just do their own thing until explicitly told they\u2019re wanted. Others, trying keep their job, scramble to show their value.\u00a0Dunn took a slightly different approach.<\/p>\n
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Either he was going to work for Udoka or not but either way, he wanted to use the opportunity to develop relationships with the staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the very least, somebody might call them in a couple years and be like, \u2018Hey, you were around Will Dunn for a couple months in Houston. How is he? \u2019\u201d Dunn explained. \u201c \u2026 I went into it with just the mindset, like in five, six years, I want to be proud of the way I went about that situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
It helped that they saw the game in similar ways. One of\u00a0Udoka\u2019s keys when he coached the Boston Celtics was putting his shot-blocking center on the opponent\u2019s weakest shooter. That allowed the player to roam on the weak side and protect the rim while the other four players switched all actions. One of the first key conversations Dunn recalled having with Udoka was telling him that he loved the strategy and wanted to employ it more with Rockets center Alperen \u015eeng\u00fcn.<\/p>\n
Dunn\u2019s experience as the head video coordinator with Houston also helped him stick around. Udoka was bringing in a new video room largely untested in an NBA setting, so the coach asked Dunn to hang around during training camp to teach the new guys before he went to the Vipers.<\/p>\n
Dunn pulled double duty during camp and in the preseason, helping the Rockets while crafting plans for the Vipers.<\/p>\n
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Around this time\u00a0\u2014 and here\u2019s where the luck really comes in\u00a0\u2014 assistant coach Cam Hodges was recovering from leg surgery and couldn\u2019t work with players on the court, opening an avenue for Dunn.<\/p>\n
The Rockets kept pushing back Dunn\u2019s move to the G League. Finally, around the start of the regular season, Udoka told him he\u2019d be staying up with the NBA club.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t stay around eight years, three staffs without getting a ton of luck and a ton of good breaks,\u201d Dunn said. \u201c \u2026 There\u2019s a world where if Cam\u2019s knee is totally healthy, I\u2019m not with the Rockets to this day, or I might not even be coaching at this point. You just don\u2019t know. You need a bunch of breaks for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
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An injury to fellow assistant Cam Hodges (center) led to Will\u00a0Dunn (left) sticking on Ime Udoka’s staff with fellow assistant Ben Sullivan.<\/p>\n
Brett Coomer\/Staff photographer<\/p>\n
Driving the bus<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a brief scouting report of Dunn, delivered by Johnny Tauer, his former college coach at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHe was not scoring 21 points a game,\u201d Tauer said. \u201cHe was the guy oftentimes guarding the other team\u2019s best player. He was going to take a charge. He was going to dive on the floor for a loose ball. He was going to take incredible joy in setting a screen or making the extra pass.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dunn first played college ball at Indiana \u2013Purdue Fort Wayne before transferring to St. Thomas. He played three seasons with the\u00a0Tommies, winning a Division III title in 2016.<\/p>\n
Tauer recalled he and a friend watching Dunn play at a summer game in 2014 soon after the transfer. It didn\u2019t take long before the friend turned to the coach and said of Dunn: \u201cHe plays Tommy basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Will Dunn, known as a glue guy at St. Thomas (Minn.), helped the Tommies win the Division III national championship in 2016.<\/p>\n
Don Petersen\/AP<\/p>\n
Just about everything Dunn did, from how he pivoted to how he pass-faked to how he crouched into a defensive stance to how he communicated on defense, showed his desire to impact winning and knowledge of how to do so. Tauer soon realized that Dunn would want to get into coaching after his playing career. The first thing the longtime coach asks people when they express such a desire?<\/p>\n
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\u201cDo you understand what you\u2019re getting into?\u201d Tauer said. \u201c \u2026 This is not a career for the faint of heart. If you\u2019re doing it for the money, you\u2019re doing it for the accolades, the odds of that stuff happening are really slim. You got to have a passion for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite that, he had minimal concerns about Dunn\u2019s ability to transition into coaching because of his selfless\u00a0style of play. Tauer could see Dunn\u2019s willingness and ability to fill a variety of unglamorous, yet crucial roles translated to coaching.\u00a0Dunn started as a high school assistant coach and then got an internship with the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, then the Indiana Pacers\u2019 G League affiliate.<\/p>\n
On his first day, they told Dunn to learn how to drive the team bus.<\/p>\n
It took him six weeks to get a bus driver\u2019s license. He picked the Mad Ants and their opponents up from the airport and took them to games or practice. When he got there, he\u2019d get on the court. Player development, cutting video, scouting\u00a0\u2014 you name it, Dunn did it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a typical new assistant,\u201d said Omari Johnson, a player on that Mad Ants team. \u201c(He did) a lot of the work that the other coaches won\u2019t or can\u2019t do. You got to earn your stripes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dunn got them. He\u2019d move back to Minnesota to work for the WNBA\u2019s Lynx as a video coordinator, experience that served him well for his next stop with the Rockets.<\/p>\n
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As an intern with the Pacers’ G League affiliate in Fort Wayne, Ind., one of Will Dunn’s duties was driving the team bus.<\/p>\n
Courtesy Will Dunn<\/p>\n
Dunn\u2019s coaching philosophies sound, as you\u2019d expect, like an amalgamation of Houston\u2019s strategies across the past decade. He offered the caveat that everything he\u2019d do would be adjusted to his personnel but emphasized winning the analytical margins of the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dunn said he believed in offensive rebounding and in optimizing shot selection, focusing on threes or attempts at the rim. But he noted that with teams now trying to force more turnovers, there is value in shooting a \u201cbad shot\u201d in service of avoiding a giveaway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Being a head coach gave him additional control, but the newfound authority came with challenges.<\/p>\n
As an assistant, Dunn prefers to present Udoka options, outlining potential tradeoffs with each before offering a recommendation. But being a head coach demands he make a final decision, a challenge made even more difficult while trying to install a new offense and defense with a new roster\u00a0\u2014 with some players who have never played professional basketball before\u00a0\u2014 and without much practice time.<\/p>\n
Summer League is just Summer League, but with that caveat, Dunn\u2019s Rockets have been feisty and successful. The coach has already impressed Quadir Copeland, a guard for the Rockets’ summer team, with his willingness to fill a variety of roles in service of winning.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s with us every day. He\u2019s watching film individually with us. He\u2019s making sure we stay on top of doing all the right things off the court with all the distractions,\u201d Copeland said.<\/p>\n
\u201c \u2026 He cares. That\u2019s all you can ask for in a coach.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ticketed for a G League job after a regime change three years ago, assistant Will\u00a0Dunn showed his value…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-379463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}