Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — Kris Dunn quickly admitted it sounds corny, but when he thinks about signing the full deal with the Utah Jazz, he can't help but picture his father's smile.
"My whole family's happy for me," he said. "It just makes you work harder and do more things, like that just to make the people around me happy and for them to be happy for me. So definitely a great feeling."
Dunn and his family weren't the only ones smiling with the deal.
"Those are the easy, feel-good moments over the course of a season," Jazz coach Will Hardy said. "He's somebody that very openly will talk about his own journey — obviously getting drafted pretty high and then maybe the first part of his career not necessarily panning out the way that he envisioned it."
The next act of his career might not go how anybody expected either. A month ago, Dunn was out of the league. Now, he looks like he could be a fixture for the Jazz moving forward. He was labeled as a perimeter defender and nothing more; he's proven there's plenty more.
He is shooting 45% from 3-point range since joining the Jazz, and is averaging 5.4 assists. On Monday, he had 18 points and 10 assists to help Utah upset Sacramento.
"I continue to be reminded almost every day that the great part about basketball is that you can always get better," Hardy said. "I think we're all a little bit quick to judge players too quickly."
The Jazz have been the benefactors of teams putting Lauri Markkanen in a box too early, too. Now, they may have found another gem in another former lottery pick.
Dunn has clearly improved his game over the years. He altered his shooting mechanics, discovered an efficient midrange game, and found a better playing weight (he said he went from 210 pounds to 200 to start this season). All of it has helped him show that he's more than just a one-dimensional player.
When Dunn first arrived in Utah, that's something Hardy was reminded of often. Each time Dunn bullied his way in for a layup, the point guard would glance over to the head coach and flex.
"Yeah, I'll be flexing at coach sometimes," Dunn said through a smile. "Just letting him know like, 'coach, I'm here.' The muscle tone is there. Most people look at me like I'm a skinny guy, but I like to play bully ball so I just let them know like, 'Don't worry, you're safe with me coach.'"
Hardy called the gesture "hilarious."
Funny, yes, but it's also telling.
There's a newfound confidence in Dunn's game, which is easy to spot on the court, and the Jazz feel it even when he walks into the gym each day. For a team full of young and shy guys, he's been a welcomed addition into the locker room.
"He just carries himself with a moxie and a swagger that our team feeds off of," Hardy said "It's not just how he runs the team offensively in terms of like breaking guys down off the dribble and then finding his teammates, it's the way he guards the ball, the way he picks up the ball handler, his body language, like he just carries himself with a confidence and a presence that feeds into the rest of the group."
The good news for the Jazz is they don't think he's done improving yet, either. The team doesn't want to put him into yet another box.
"Kris is in no way at his ceiling right now at his age," Hardy said. "It always makes me take a step back when these things happen and (think), you can't label guys too early. We can't take away the fact that any player in basketball can always improve in some way."
And Dunn, who said this stretch with the Jazz represents some of the best basketball he's ever played, claimed there's still more to come — on the court and even in the swagger department.
"When you're confident and you put the work in, good things happen," he said. "I think it's just my confidence, my swag's all the way back."
That's when he paused for a moment before continuing: "It's not all the way back; I've got a little bit more, just letting y'all know."
He's eager to give more people reason to smile.
