Former Temple star Candice Dupree ventures into a coaching career through the NBA’s assistant program

CHICAGO — Jamila Wideman watched as a prospect at the NBA draft combine moved away from the ongoing drills to shoot free throws at an unoccupied basket.

The player clearly was tired. And Candice Dupree immediately stepped in to “rev him up.”

“All she’s doing is rebounding and passing back to him,” said Wideman, the NBA’s senior vice president of player development. “But you saw her see what he was going through and just that tiny shift in her own energy. As a player, it’s such a gift for somebody to do that.”

That is an example of the knack for coaching inside Dupree, the former Temple star who then enjoyed a 16-year professional career in the WNBA and overseas before retiring last fall. Now, she is exploring bringing that experience to the sideline, a transition fostered by the NBA’s Assistant Coaches Program for former professional players that, earlier this month, sent Dupree to work on-court with prospects auditioning for executives, scouts, and coaches ahead of the upcoming draft.

“You’re working alongside these people that have been working in the NBA for years,” Dupree said, “so it’s pretty cool to just talk to them and pick their brain and just soak up all the knowledge.”

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Dupree long believed she did not have the patience for coaching — until becoming a mother to 4-year-old twin girls. A conversation with Bonnie Thurston, the director of WNBA Player Programs whom Dupree has known since she was a rookie, about potential NBA opportunities after she finished playing shifted to the ACP. The program, which currently is helmed by Erjaam Hayes and Stacey Lovelace, has existed since 1988 and has trained more than 200 former NBA, WNBA, and G League players, including 2021-22 NBA Coach of the Year Monty Williams of the Phoenix Suns.

The ACP includes virtual and classroom-style training sessions on film and scouting technology used at all levels, such as Synergy and SportsCode, which Dupree said has been extremely helpful. Participants also have weekly scouting report and film clip assignments that are critiqued by former NBA coach Butch Carter, who “will tear your [expletive] apart … but it’s good because it helps you learn,” Dupree said.

Dupree also recently assisted on-court at the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, a predraft camp for college seniors scouted by NBA personnel. She also is scheduled to work the NBA academy for international girls players in Atlanta and then NBA Summer League in Las Vegas.

In this role, Dupree can pull from her past coaches, including Dawn Staley at Temple, Geno Auriemma with Team USA, and Pokey Chatman in the WNBA. In the combine setting, Dupree said she aimed to “keep it light because [the players are] already nervous” while still making corrections when necessary. During scrimmages, Dupree got stints as the head coach, drawing up plays during timeouts and hollering instructions from the sideline.

“[I try to] not to be too preachy with them because they already have enough pressure,” Dupree said, “but give them the information that they need to know, the stuff that we were told to coach them.”

The recent in-person events also have allowed Dupree to network. She bonded with fellow ACP participants Elaine Powell, a former WNBA teammate, and former men’s professional players Jason Maxiell and Isaiah Austin. She has also met key NBA personnel, such as Orlando Magic assistant general manager Anthony Parker and Minnesota Timberwolves assistant general manager Joe Branch. In between on-court responsibilities, Dupree was among those mingling with NBA personnel inside the lobby of the Chicago hotel adjacent to Wintrust Arena.

Wideman calls the combine a particularly serendipitous benchmark during the ACP because it brings those phasing out of their playing careers together with prospects on the precipice of becoming professionals. It also embodies the program’s greater purpose to utilize former players’ natural abilities as lifelong learners, leaders, and people who seize opportunity. Still, Wideman admires those former players’ courage to take a deliberate step into that new chapter.

“There’s a period of mourning and grief around stepping away from the game, and at the very same time, trying to learn something new,” said Wideman, who played in the WNBA for three-plus seasons after a standout career at Stanford. “… It’s a journey that is certainly about your technical skills, but it’s a journey about you as a human being and taking a leap.

“I have just tremendous respect for the folks that raise their hand to do that, and I feel very privileged to be a witness and to be a part of this particular moment in that transition.”

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It’s an interesting time for women coaching men’s basketball. Becky Hammon, who interviewed for multiple NBA head coaching jobs while an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs and was presumed to be the first woman who would be hired for such a role, recently became the head coach of the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces. Kara Lawson and Niele Ivey, who were assistants with the Boston Celtics and Memphis Grizzlies, respectively, left those posts to become head coach at prestigious college women’s programs Duke and Notre Dame, respectively. Kristi Toliver, meanwhile, just wrapped her season as a Dallas Mavericks assistant and immediately will join the Los Angeles Sparks to play her 13th WNBA season.

Dupree also sees role models in women such as Edniesha Curry, an assistant with the Portland Trail Blazers who also coached at the combine. Together, Dupree and Powell have Googled which teams have women on their coaching staffs. Dupree is weighing pursuing jobs in the NBA, where “you are gone a lot” during an 82-game regular season, or college positions from which perhaps she someday could build her own program.

But speaking in Chicago with a staffer from the Indiana Pacers gave Dupree hope that a future as an NBA coach could be viable, even as a mother. She learned head coach Rick Carlisle allows assistant Jenny Boucek, who has a young child, to have a more flexible schedule that includes missing select road games.

That conversation was possible because of the NBA’s Assistant Coaches Program.

“It kind of makes you feel like, ‘Well, I actually have a chance,’” Dupree said. “Obviously, a lot of it is who you know, which is why this stuff is huge.”