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PROVO — Kevin Young continues to build his coaching staff at BYU basketball with a varied group.
The Cougars have added former NBA and G League coach Tim Fanning as an assistant coach in the program, the school announced Tuesday.
Fanning comes to BYU after most recently coaching in Overtime Elite since 2021 and joins a staff that includes former Stanford assistant Brandon Dunson, former Utah assistant Chris Burgess, and Will Voigt, most recently head coach of the Austin Spurs in the NBA G League.
"I'm excited to welcome Tim to BYU," Young said in a statement. "He comes with very unique coaching experiences after coaching in the NBA G-League, Euroleague and being a head coach at different levels. Tim has traveled the world learning different philosophies and gained a strong network along the way. He's a very intelligent coach with a strong background in player development. Our entire program will benefit from Tim's expertise."
Prior to his time on the pre-professional prep basketball circuit where he coached players like projected lottery pick Alex Sarr and Amen Thompson, the No. 4 pick in the 2023 NBA draft, Fanning was an assistant coach with the Atlanta Hawks from 2017-18. He also spent time overseas as an assistant at Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel beginning in 2016.
With Maccabi, Fanning was part of a staff that won four consecutive Israeli league titles, including two while coaching former BYU standout Elijah Bryant.
He took his first head coaching job by 30 years old with the Nelson giants of New Zealand's National Basketball League prior to departing for the Israeli powers.
In 2013, Fanning first got a job as an assistant coach and video coordinator for the Delaware 87ers, where he met Young. The two struck up a friendship, even as the now-BYU head coach rose to become the highest-paid assistant in the NBA with the Phoenix Suns and Fanning's career took him overseas and to the highest level of prep basketball in the United States.
A native of Oakland, California, and a multi linguist, Fanning spends 30-45 minutes every morning studying different languages, he said in an interview with Maccabi Tel Aviv Basketball five years ago. He also spoke of his developmental background in basketball in the same team-produced video.
"For me, the most magical moment for me is when the team or the players execute something that you've been working on with them," he said. "I love when a player might make a type of layup that they couldn't make a month or two ago, or the team gets into a defensive rotation in the way that a few months ago, we weren't doing. Those kinds of things are magical in their own way."
