The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Will Dunn Talks Rockets Summer League, Bruce Thornton & Player Development

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Will Dunn Talks Rockets Summer League, Bruce Thornton & Player Development

1102 here on 790. Matt and Ross with you here from Las Vegas, where the Summer League team will be taken on the 76 years later today on ESPN, and the man that will coach that team is a man that's been around the Rockets for a long period of time. He's assistant coach and coaching the Summer League team. Well done with us here for our first time on the Matt, Thomas Show, with Ross. Coach Dunn, great to have you with us. First of all, congratulations for this opportunity.

Explain the audience, you've had a little bit of everything with this organization. You've worked with now four different coaches. What's that been like to be around different types of people and leadership in this organization? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a great point, no doubt. First of all, thanks for having me on. It's always a pleasure. Yeah, it's been quite the journey with the Rockets.

This will be going into this next season. It will be my eighth year. It's been my first year was with Coach Dan Tony and that James Hardin era group. And then I was with Stephen Silas, his three years with us. And then obviously coach Adoka comes in. I've been with them that whole stretch of the way there. It's been really for me, it's been an awesome opportunity to just kind of learn how different coaches do different things and how different schemes can get implemented and what works, what doesn't work.

Kind of just a good bash course and like a variety of different ways to coach a basketball team in reality. And I'm so proud of you and happy for your success. It's funny because Mike Dantonie is known as one of the greatest offensive minds, perhaps in coaching history. And obviously, E. Nadeoga has been able to learn and become a very good assistant coach because of his defensive tendencies. What a strange opposite ends of the world to learn from two different people like that. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Just like my first year in the NBA getting to learn how modern NBA offense works under a coach like Mike Dantone was obviously such a blessing for me.

And at the start of my career, just learning kind of how to coach offense with spacing and what type of sets to run. what type of actions work, getting your guys to buy in, getting your guys to play fast. But also just one really big thing that he taught me early on was just how to keep it simple. Like he was so good at like, hey, look, if something's working and working well, we're going to get out of their way and we're just going to let them do it rather than trying to overcomplicate things or overthinking. He'd always, he'd always make the joke like, hey, let's not start coaching them and screw him up. So that was a great, that was a great lesson from him.

that I always got. And then, yeah, with Coach Udoka, obviously, his defensive prowess as a coach as a tactician is, I think, one of the best in the league, if not the best in the league. Right when he came in, he came in and turned us into, obviously, with some help with some personnel changes, but he turned us right into a top five defense right away. And it has been that way since. And he's just not only the teaching, the defensive kind of problem solving, but also his ability to get guys to buy in and to hold them accountable to what we're asking them to do is

second to none. Rocket Summer League coach and assistant will done with us here on the Matt Thomas Show with Ross and we'll also get to a couple of players here just a minute but I want to ask you and I know the answers but I think it's good for the audience. You guys are treating this visit here to Las Vegas like it is an NBA training camp with games and so let me ask you not necessarily on an individual basis but from a macro view of things what is it like taking these young men these college kids or guys that have been maybe with G-League teams on their teams and putting them under the rocket style of how you guys practice, how you guys eat, train, play games. What has that been like watching some of these young guys, especially the ones that are

fresh out of college learning the rocket system? Yeah, that's a great way to put it. It's been really fun. Obviously, like you said, it's kind of a truncated version of what a lot of these guys that are going to be with us will see in the fall. But it's really cool to kind of be the first guys to kind of get your hands on these. these young players and start molding them into the guys, into the players we want them to be for the Rockets,

and then just watching them kind of learn every day, get a little, you know, the light bulb comes on a little bit more each and every day, and then the game start, they start to see it, you know, you get some success, and then you kind of kind of build off of it from there. That's been really cool to see. The other part that's kind of fun for our group,

that's kind of unique to the Summer League group is, we're doing, we're implementing a ton of the Rockets principles and what they're gonna be seeing with the Houston Rockets, but we also get a little leeway to kind of experiment with some other things as well, things that maybe might be something the big club is looking to adopt or something that we might be interested. Hey, we could try that. That could be good for our group or something that me or a couple of our other kind of assistant coaches that are on my staff, just are interested in seeing for our own sake, like, hey, I've always thought this might be something

that could work, like let's try it, whether it's just an offensive set or whether it's a defensive coverage or a certain kind of something unique like that. So it's been fun to kind of marry those two things together. Rockets Summer League head coach Will Dunnell with us here on Sports Talk 7. Idy Ross with you as well, Will. And I'm just curious that kind of just the boots on the ground human element of this. What is the things that you're doing like to kind of teaching all these guys to be professionals? Do you feel like you're a teacher or like a summer camp counselor?

or something like that and trying to teach guys of practice habits and all that and how to get to and from the arenas and the practices and all that stuff? Yeah, well, that's a funny, like funny you mention it. We always joke, there's a joke that probably a lot of staffs make, but definitely on our staff, we're always joking that we're part-time coach, part-time teacher, part-time therapist, part-time big brother, part-time uncle, whatever it is, you know?

So we wear a lot of hats as coaches, obviously, and it all just kind of goes with, comes with the job description. But especially when you get these younger guys, there's definitely a lot of elements to that. I will say we have just an awesome group. We have like a handful of guys that are vets as far as Summer League goes. We have guys that Dacia Knicks, Isaiah Crawford, Tristan Newton, all these. These are guys that have been around the NBA now for a couple of years at least. So they kind of know how it goes.

And then we have Bruce Thornton and Quadir, Copeland, who I'm sure we'll get to some of these guys. but these guys are guys that spent, especially Bruce, spent a lot of time in college. And these guys are polished and they're smart and they're sharp and they pick everything up really quickly. So I do think we've gotten lucky as far as that goes. And then also I do think when guys, more and more as guys, especially the guys that have spent two or three years in college or elsewhere before they get into the NBA, they're coming out more polished just because of all the money and the agents and the NIL and all that stuff that goes into it now. it's become way more of a business. So I do think there is an element of that where it's a little bit easier.

You mentioned Bruce Thornton. Obviously, that's kind of been the headliner of the Summer League roster for the Rockets. Just tell us about him as a young man and also kind of either basketball-wise or personally. What impresses you the most about him and then some things you guys want him to work on. Yeah, well, we'll start with him as a person. I think that's first and foremost with him. He's 10 out of 10 as a dude. he was a four-year captain at Ohio State.

I think that's been going around quite a bit when we talk about him, but that's just a pretty rare thing to see, like to be a captain your first year at a big-time college basketball program is pretty rare. So that says a lot about his character right there alone, but then when you get him in the gym, you see the way he works, you see the way he carries himself. He's got like this quiet confidence to him,

but with a good dose of humility as well. He's not going to beat the loudest guy in the gym, but you feel his presence in there for sure. And then he's just on the court. He's just really steady. Like we just trust him with the ball in his hands. We trust him as a leader. He's just really steady than keeled.

Never gets too high, never gets too low. And he just plays with the toughness that you just, you can't teach. So that's him as a person. That's him as a dude. As a basketball player, what we love about him so much is, A, the shot making in college was incredible.

He was the guy that basically wherever he shot, whether it was at the rim from two mid-range area to the three-point line he shot very very well that's obviously something that was attracted to our group and then also he's the guy that can handle the ball in pressure with great defenders guarding him under duress he can handle the ball for big long periods of time without turning it over at a high rate he turns it over very very few i think he saw that a lot in our first summer league game for those of you that watched he had the ball. He played 35 minutes, had the ball in his hand the whole game. He had one turnover. So that's kind of another element that he brings to the group. And then defensively, he's just really solid, really strong for his size.

He's a little smaller, but he's strong. He's stout. He's physical. And he's really smart. So he's able to kind of get away with that stuff as well defensively with how smart he is. All right, we'll let you go on this well. What will you tell Bruce what he has to do? Now look, he's going to be in the gym shooting. You know, he's going to be working on his game. He wants to get into that rotation. There's obviously a lot of competition at the guard spot. Marcus Smart is in. You got Reed, you got a man, you got Fred, hopefully coming back.

How does Bruce crack playing time for Eme Adoka if he was to work on something over the next handful of weeks? Yeah, well, I think first and foremost for him, I think he's just got to get comfortable being super aggressive hunting his shot. So I mentioned already how great of a shooter he was in college, and we've seen it already in a couple of these summer league games, how good of a shooter he is. He's got to be comfortable. He's got to have no conscience as far as if he has an open look, he's got to pull the trigger every time. And that's an adjustment a lot of guys make,

especially coming from college, where it might be a little bit more conservative of a coaching staff or you're just trying to make the right play or whatever it might be. But in the NBA, like it's 24 second shot clock. It's a little bit quicker. The defense is better. If you get a clean look, you got to take it,

especially when you're a great shooter like him. So that's going to be an area where he's just got to continue to get comfortable with. And then I would say to him also, look, we're, I would say last year we had a little bit of a shortage of two-way play. Like we had guys that were really good offensively or really good defensively. And we didn't have, whether it was because of injuries or whatever, we didn't have a bunch of guys that we trusted on both ends of the floor. And I do think he's a guy that could be really excel as far as could bring a lot of juice offensively. But then with his ball pressure, with his intensity, with his physicality on defense, he can really help us as well.

Well, Will, you sound like a head coach, my man. Congratulations on getting this opportunity. And good luck today against the 76ers. The games on Prime at 3 o'clock this afternoon back home. And we'll catch up with you before training camp. Thanks for the visit. We really appreciate it. Thank you, my friend.

Always a pleasure.