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Report: Temple to hire Jalen Brunson’s father

Illinois Class 4A Basketball

Stevenson’s Jalen Brunson (15) cheers on his team as they play Edwardsville for the Illinois Class 4A third place game in Peoria, Ill., Saturday, March 22, 2014. (AP Photo/Journal Star, Fred Zwicky)

AP

Fran Dunphy will be making a change on his coaching staff, according to a report from Philly.com.

The Temple head coach will bring Rick Brunson aboard as an assistant, the report says. Brunson is a former player for the Owls from the John Chaney era. He spent almost a decade as a player in the NBA and has been an assistant in the NBA for a couple of different teams, most recently the Charlotte Bobcats, as well as a staffer at Virginia and as assistant with Hartford.

So Brunson has the résumé to deserve a spot on a collegiate coaching staff.

But that’s not what would make this hire interesting if it comes to fruition. (For what it’s worth, this hire has been rumored to be in the works for a while.) Rick’s son is Jalen Brunson, arguably the best point guard in the Class of 2015 and a top-15 recruit nationally. Dunphy already has three assistants on his staff, meaning that he will have to re-assign a current assistant coach to bring Brunson aboard. It would stand to reason that if he’s going to go through the process of making this hire, he’s going to bring aboard a coach that can, at the least, recruit his own son.

The NCAA passed a rule a few years back that eliminated these sorts of package deals by disallowing a family member -- or a coach -- from being hired at the same school as the prospect that he is associated with. The caveat is that the package deal is allowed as long as the coach or the family member is brought on as one of the three official assistant coaches.

According to the report, Rick will be hired as an assistant.

Does that mean that Jalen will be committing to the Owls? Brunson listed Temple in his final list of eight schools earlier this spring.