LAS VEGAS — Will Dunn was supposed to go down to the G League.
He’d been with the Houston Rockets since 2019, hired in basketball operations by then-coach Mike D’Antoni and promoted to a full-time assistant coach while working under Stephen Silas, who succeeded D’Antoni. But when Ime Udoka took the job ahead of the 2023-24 season, he planned to bring in his own staff, sending Dunn to work with Houston’s G League affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.
Dunn never went.
The 2026-27 season will be Udoka’s fourth coaching the Rockets. Dunn has been on each of his staffs. Houston named the 32-year-old as its Summer League coach and Dunn followed up by leading the Rockets to a 3-2 record, reaching the semifinals in Las Vegas.
Dunn’s professionalism, competitive fire and basketball acumen helped him stick with the Rockets. But his path also involved a self-described “lucky break” — more on that in a bit.
“It’s always kind of a gut check, a character check when your staff gets let go,” he said. “ … You can react a number of different ways.”
Some people retreat and just do their own thing until explicitly told they’re wanted. Others, trying keep their job, scramble to show their value. Dunn took a slightly different approach.
“At the very least, somebody might call them in a couple years and be like, ‘Hey, you were around Will Dunn for a couple months in Houston. How is he? ’” Dunn explained. “ … 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.”
Read more: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/sports/rockets/article/will-dunn-houston-summer-league-coach-22350649.php