Where Are They Now: Brett Gunning, Men's Basketball

A native of the Philadelphia area, Brett Gunning came to Hofstra in 1994 from UNLV as a member of the incoming coaching staff under Hofstra Head Coach Jay Wright. During Gunning’s time as an assistant coach, Hofstra improved from a 10-win program in 1994-95 to back-to-back NCAA Tournament qualifiers and America East Conference champions in 1999-00 and 2000-01. 

Hofstra went 103-85 during his tenure, including a record of 72-22 from 1998 to 2001 that saw the Pride make three straight postseason basketball appearances, including those back-to-back trips to the NCAA Tournament. Gunning coached Hofstra basketball legends such as Norman Richardson, Jay Hernandez, Roberto Gittens, and current Hofstra men’s basketball assistant coach Speedy Claxton.

Following the 2000-01 season, Gunning left Hempstead to become an assistant coach under Jay Wright at Villanova University, where he has strong family ties dating back to his great uncle, who was an Augustinian priest. As a part of Wright’s Villanova staff from 2001 to 2008, the Wildcats played postseason basketball in all seven seasons, including four straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 2004-05 to 2007-08. Gunning was eventually elevated to the position of associate head coach in 2005.

After seven years with Villanova, Gunning was hired as the director of player development with the Houston Rockets in 2008 and he was later named an assistant coach from 2011 to 2012. Gunning would later spend three seasons as an assistant coach with the Orlando Magic until he returned to the Rockets for the 2015-16 season. He would spend another five seasons with the Rockets before stepping away from coaching following the 2019-20 NBA season. During his time in Houston, the Rockets would make the NBA Playoffs six times, including a run to the NBA Western Conference Finals in the 2017-18 season.

In 2020, Gunning launched On The Right Path, a non-profit organization whose mission is to guide inner-city youth on the right path to achieving their maximum potential through education, mentorship, and basketball skill development. With author Stacy Padula, Gunning is working on a children’s book series based on the principles of On The Right Path.

Gunning is married and is the father of three children.

What led to your decision to coach at Hofstra?

Jay Wright and I had developed a great relationship at UNLV and when he had gotten the job at Hofstra, he asked if he could bring me with him. At that age, when you’re in your early 20s and this opportunity presents itself to you, you don’t really think about it. From my standpoint, Jay was a great guy and it was a great opportunity to try and build something, and it was a really simple decision to be close to family, so it was exciting. It was exciting for me to graduate from college and have the opportunity to jump right into a coaching position.

What were your impressions of Hofstra basketball before becoming an assistant coach with the program?

What I remember most was Jay and [future Hofstra Head Coach] Tom Pecora mentioning an article in Basketball Times or some publication; It was a review of all the college basketball programs in New York, and Hofstra wasn’t mentioned once. So, that’s one thing that stood out to me about where Hofstra men’s basketball was at that time. 

I also remember when Jay was introduced, it was a joint press conference with the University announcing him as the new head coach and that Hofstra was joining the North Atlantic Conference, which eventually became the America East Conference. They were basically announcing that Hofstra was going to be leaving the East Coast Conference, which was one of the lowest-rated conferences in all of Division I basketball. So not only were they announcing a new head coach in Jay Wright, but they were announcing that we would be playing in a new conference.

What was your favorite memory from your time at Hofstra?

That’s a great question because when you’re there for seven years, you have so many memories to choose from. One that stands out was during our first year when we went to play Drexel, who was the powerhouse of the conference at the time. Jay was big on special moments and tying them to our road trips; we went and got cheesesteaks, and later we pulled up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and we have our guys get out and run up the “Rocky” steps. The guys were all fired up after that, and there was a great energy with that group.

We go over to Drexel and, by the first timeout, the game is pretty much over. We were down 15, and we lose by 30. But when you think about how something starts, it makes where the journey goes that much better because we eventually became the top team in the conference. I’ve been very fortunate to be a part of building many journeys, and that was the first one of being at the bottom and seeing it out to the point where you’re the champion of the conference.

As time went on, Hofstra improved from a sub .500 team to champions of the America East Conference. How did it feel to see Hofstra turn into a championship-winning program?

When you’re in the midst of it, you don’t realize the magnitude of what you’re doing. We were literally just trying to get better every year, and we were very fortunate guys like Speedy Claxton had committed to Hofstra. He committed to us as a junior and he continued to improve as a senior, and he had offers to go elsewhere, but he stayed true to his word and showed the kind of person he was. 

We were fortunate for people like him, Norman Richardson, Roberto Gittens, Jay Hernandez… these guys took a chance  on what we were doing, and ultimately under Jay’s leadership, it all came together. But all of the credit along the way during year four, year five, it was these guys that jumped into it with us and believed in what we were doing. And as those guys matured and came together as a group, that’s when we were able to culminate everything we had built with two conference championships.

That Hofstra coaching staff has gone on to have a lot of success in coaching collegiately or, in your case, professionally. Looking back on that group of yourself, Jay Wright, Tom Pecora and Joe Jones, what does it mean to you to have been a part of that group?

In the moment, you had guys that were plugging away to build a program. When you look back on that now, I guess you can say it all adds up to have a staff to have these terrific men together and to see where their paths have taken them. It’s not easy to build a staff, and the fact that we went from a first-year, 10-18 program to then win the conference six or seven years later is no easy feat. It was truly a great staff to be a part of.

What makes a Hofstra basketball player? What kind of person did you look to recruit and bring to Hofstra?

I think the toughness, the grittiness, and the competitiveness. Looking at Speedy Claxton, for example, he was a silent assassin in the sense that he was a quiet kid. But once he was on the court, he was as competitive as anyone else. It’s the same thing with guys like Jay Hernandez; he’s a great kid, comes from a terrific family, but when he stepped on the court, he was a very competitive, tough person. 

That competitiveness and the hunger to be great were key. When you’re building a program, you need that fire to get yourself over the hump. And we were very fortunate for guys like Norman Richardson, Roberto Gittens and Ricky Apodaca; these guys came with a competitiveness about them that was the difference.

What made you want to be a basketball coach?

I was very fortunate, at a very young age, to be around the legendary Villanova Coach Rollie Massimino. I pretty much grew up around Villanova’s campus, dating back to when my great uncle was an Augustinian priest there. My mom ran a travel agency nearby, my uncle taught business law classes there, my father attended Villanova, and my grandfather worked at the front desk in the athletic department. So I kind of grew up on that campus, and I was fortunate enough to go to coach Massimino’s camps as a youngster. That led to me meeting him and not only going to the camps, but helping out and working the camps, as well. 

At a very young age, maybe 12 or 13-years-old, I had this clear vision of being around him and the camp-setting, and just seeing all the coaches that he would bring in to speak to the campers… I just remember, at a very young age, being bit by that passion for coaching.

What was it like to go from attending coach Massimino’s camps at a young age to working under him as a student assistant at Villanova and later as an assistant at UNLV?

It was a dream come true for me. The funny thing was towards the end of my sophomore year at Villanova, Coach Massimino made the decision to leave Villanova and take the job at UNLV. And at the team meeting where he told the guys that he was leaving, he grabbed me and said he was taking me with him. So I remember going back to the dorms and, showing how long ago this was, I go to the payphone at the end of the hall and call my parents to tell them that I’m going to be leaving Villanova to go to Las Vegas.

Looking back on it, it seems a lot crazier than at the time. I think for me, it was calling them, all excited, telling them that Coach Massimino wanted me to come with him, and that he put me on scholarship. In my mind, there was no thought process of whether it was a good idea or not. It was more like ‘this is so cool’ that I’m getting this chance. Being a parent now, though, just thinking of that phone call coming from my child… leaving Villanova to go to Las Vegas. But they knew how fortunate I was to be around Coach Massimino, and they knew that he was going to take good care of me.

After that 2001 NCAA Tournament appearance, Jay Wright is hired as the head coach at Villanova and he brings you with him. With your deep ties to Villanova, what did it mean to you to coach there?

It was incredible. I had gone on this journey where I was in Las Vegas for two years, in New York for seven years, and now to have the opportunity to be back around family and to be back on a campus where I grew up was absolutely incredible. As I said earlier, my grandfather had worked at the information desk, so he was the first person you’d see when you entered the athletic facility. So something as simple as coming in and seeing him every day was very special to me.

I have a brother and a sister, and they were be able to come and sit behind the bench at our games, and Jay and his wife, Patricia, were always so caring to them. I remember we played a tournament in Maui one Thanksgiving and my mom was able to make that trip. So from a standpoint of being around your family, doing what you love to do, and being at a school that you were kind of raised at, it doesn’t get any better than that.

What did you learn from your time at Hofstra that you took with you to Villanova and later to the NBA?

I remember being in Jay’s kitchen after the first conference championship, and I remember saying to him ‘can you imagine if this is the only reason you got into coaching?’ It took six years of a lot of work to be in a position to win a championship. I think what I took most is that, for as much as everyone wants to win a championship, you’ve got to be into it for other reasons. Whether it’s impacting lives, developing friendships; the winning and the championships come if you’re fortunate enough to have great players and to be able to put the team together to maximize their potential.

For as great and important to win our first championship was, what was really important was all the relationships and the friendships that you build over that time; those are the things that definitely stuck with me the most.

After coaching at Villanova for seven years, you made the jump to the NBA as the director of player development with the Houston Rockets. How did that come about, and what did it mean to you to coach in the NBA?

I loved the NBA. I just had a love affair with the NBA as a kid, and even when I was at Hofstra, the Pat Riley Knicks were rolling in the NBA and a great team to watch. I always loved the NBA, and it was always my dream to coach there. We knew no one from the Rockets; they had gotten ahold of my name and reached out, and they were looking to build their system of player development. I think they were looking to go the college route, in the sense of looking to someone from the college environment. There was a great respect for the program that I was a part of, so they wound up reaching out to me, and we met several times. 

I wound up getting hired by them, which started my 12-year journey in the NBA. I was fortunate to go on a great journey with the Rockets, and then I moved on to Orlando before coming back again. I was just so thankful and fortunate for the opportunity.

As someone who grew up loving the NBA, what was it like to eventually coach some of the best basketball players in the world?

That first Rockets team I was a part of had Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady, Ron Artest, and Shane Battier, just to name a few. So not only are you going to the NBA… you’re going to the NBA with a really great team. And [Houston Rockets Head Coach] Rick Adelman was an outstanding coach. It’s not only that I had this opportunity to coach in the NBA at all, but I was fortunate to be a part of a great team. My first year, we make it to Game Seven of the Western Conference Semifinals and run into the great Kobe Bryant Lakers, who go on to win the NBA title. 

It was really something else to achieve your dream of coaching in the NBA. To be able to watch Kobe Bryant, up close and in person, surrounded by these great players on my own team, was something special and incredible start to my professional journey.

What was the change like to go from the Houston Rockets to the Orlando Magic?

I was originally in player development before getting elevated to an assistant coach, but I was still what was considered ‘behind the bench’, meaning that I was positioned behind the bench despite being a coach. So I got the opportunity to join the Orlando Magic as a bench coach with Jacque Vaughn, who was a great player from Kansas, had a great career in the NBA, and was an unbelievable person. When he presented me with the opportunity to build something there, I was really excited by that because some people really enjoy the building process. And for me, I was one of those guys after my experience at Hofstra from where we were to where we ended up.

I was fortunate for my opportunity with the Magic. We had an awesome coaching staff made up of some really great coaches and great people. It was difficult; we ended up getting fired in our third year, but we enjoyed at least trying to get that process going of rebuilding a team.

What was it like to return to Houston as an assistant, where you had started your professional basketball journey?

I was very, very fortunate. My wife is from Houston, and she was seven-months pregnant at the time when I had gotten fired by the Magic, and we were given the opportunity to come back. I had maintained a good relationships with a lot of the Rockets front office, and it was amazing for them to give me the opportunity to come back. From a family perspective, for my wife to come back to Houston and be around her family for the birth of our first child, it couldn’t have worked out any better. 

What does it mean to you to be considered a part of the Hofstra family?

I think it means that there’s an appreciation for our time spent there and knowing that we’ll always be a part of that great university. It goes back to my point of enjoying being a part of something and being a part of building something. Jay had opportunities to leave along the way earlier than he did, but that wasn’t what he was about; he enjoyed being a part of the Hofstra family and having the opportunity to see the new arena be built.

None of us came here with the mindset of winning to get a better job elsewhere; we were there to build something and to be there, period. We took pride in being a part of the family and as we left, knowing that we would always be a part of that family meant a lot to all of us.

What is some advice you would have for a current Hofstra student-athlete?

I use the term ‘authentic’ as one of the life skills that I teach. Just come to peace with who you are and what your passion is. Not what someone else is passionate about, but what are you most passionate about and what brings you the most joy. When you dive into your authentic, genuine self and into this journey of what is really passionate to you, it can lead to amazing things.