BYU’s Kevin Young calls Sixers tenure ‘the most important time of my life as a young coach.’ Here’s why.

NEWARK, N.J. — Kevin Young and John Bryant sat on the bed of Bryant’s pickup truck outside his apartment in Newark, Del., deep in another hourslong conversation.

These were common while both men spent the mid-2010s on the coaching staff of the Delaware 87ers, then the G League affiliate of the 76ers. And such discussions often centered on whether their nomadic, always-on-the-grind coaching paths were sustainable for their families with young children.

“[We were] almost sometimes questioning whether our profession could allow us to be the fathers, the husbands that we strive to be,” said Bryant, now a Chicago Bulls assistant. “Because it’s hard. … [We wondered] if we made the right choice for our families.”

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Those chats are why Bryant is not surprised that, a decade later, Young on Wednesday sat about 120 miles north inside the Prudential Center, about to lead BYU into the Sweet 16 in his first season as head coach. (The Cougars lost to Alabama, 113-88, on Thursday night.)

After becoming a respected assistant with the Sixers and Phoenix Suns, Young had been a buzzy head-coaching candidate at the NBA level, before instead opting to lead the Cougars. It is a unique job that aligns with Young’s Mormon faith and the chance to return to Utah, where he previously coached at the college and D-League levels — and met his wife, Melissa, while she was a BYU student.

Yet Wednesday’s locale allowed Young to reminisce about the “unbelievable memories” from his time in the Sixers’ organization, while pushing through and out of The Process from 2013 to 2020.

Young still calls Brett Brown “by far the most influential coach I’ve worked with and for,” setting a blueprint for how to lead a team and become a program’s CEO. Young’s colleagues during that period still laud the direct communication style, supreme confidence, and elite offensive mind that Young already possessed.

His daughter, Zoey, was born in New Jersey, and his son, Van, was born in Delaware, adding to his family’s ties to the region. And as Young went through his BYU interview process, he sought insight and advice from several colleagues from that portion of his career.

Because those seven seasons were formative, helping Young eventually land a dream job.

“I’d say it was probably … ” Young said before correcting himself, “not probably. It was the most important time of my life as a young coach.”

Ask Brown about “KY” today, and the former Sixers coach fondly calls Young a “cocky white kid with wiggle and bounce.” In staff pickup games, that is, when Brown said he could count on Young to bury step-back three-pointers and bring a scorer’s mentality.

“He would bust their asses,” Brown wrote in a text message to The Inquirer Wednesday afternoon.

Hence, the supreme confidence label. And as a coach, Brown also sensed “obvious” Day 1 potential.

After holding college assistant jobs at Oxford College in Georgia and Utah Valley — plus a brief stint with the Shamrock Rovers in Ireland — Young landed in the D-League (now the G League). He was an assistant and head coach of the Utah Flash from 2007 to 2011, then the head coach of the Iowa Energy from 2011 to 2013, where he coincidentally replaced current Sixers coach Nick Nurse.

Young was promoted from an 87ers assistant to the head coach after one season. Brown believed it provided an opportunity for “a young head coach to be his own boss, and explore and try new things,” he said.

Bryant, who was hired as an assistant under Young, immediately recognized his head coach’s no-nonsense style — and a belief that temporary tense moments with players could yield long-term benefits. Earlier this week, Bryant recalled one instance when rookie big man Christian Wood “got a little mouthy” and walked away from Young during a practice, and Young followed.

“He confronted [Wood] in front of the entire team and kind of let him know where he stood,” Bryant said by phone. “And that was that. … He wasn’t afraid to take it there with guys, because, ultimately, he knew that would gain their respect.”

During the offseason, Young and Bryant hopped in Young’s silver Suzuki SUV for a daily drive to the Sixers’ Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine facility. They would partake in the morning coaches’ meeting and then link with assistant Billy Lange, who estimated he and Young ran between 50 and 60 pre-draft workouts from early May through late June during the Process era.

Run, as in administratively. And run, as in physically, while matching up against those prospects.

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“We were beaten up,” Lange said by phone earlier this week. “We probably both consumed like 3,000 calories afterwards.”

Brown elevated Young to the Sixers’ staff in 2016, joining a group that at times also included former NBA coaches Lloyd Pierce, Monty Williams, Ime Udoka, and Jim O’Brien.

Young took on more individualized player development as the Sixers rebuilt their roster through the draft. Through those workouts, Young maintained a demeanor that Pierce described as not “laughing and giggling all the time because he wants to be your friend. Instead, he’s being honest and real with you because he’s trying to tell you the truth.”

Added Lange: “He’s an ‘it can be done’ type of guy. He does not want to hear ‘no.’ He’s always looking for ways to get it done. I thought that was a real boost in the arm after having three years of just getting our butts kicked. He shows up every day, he’s got the same energy, same intensity.”

Young also helped Lange run the Sixers offense. Though Young’s schematic values — skills, spacing, shooting, and pace — were simple, Lange said, he also possessed the curiosity to tinker while “trying to make something out of nothing, because that’s where we were at that point.”

Lange recalled one time when they pitched new ways to position each member of a closing lineup of Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, JJ Redick, Robert Covington, and Dario Šarić during an early-morning meeting with Brown inside a Houston hotel room. They implemented the idea in practice the next day, then in a victory against Indiana.

“Kevin jumps from behind the bench and hugged me so hard when the game was over,” recalled Lange, who is now the head coach at St. Joseph’s. “It was one of my favorite moments of working [with the Sixers], because we had kind of constructed that together. It just felt like a real win. It felt like we had grown the program.”

When the Atlanta Hawks hired Pierce as their head coach in 2018, he said he wanted to bring Young on as an offense-focused assistant. Instead, Young was promoted to the front of the Sixers’ bench. He then became responsible for constructing “special teams” elements, such as out-of-bounds, after-timeout, and end-of-game plays. Bryant also recalled that Brown eventually trusted Young to “get on the board” to draw up sets in the heat of games.

“He had that in him always,” Bryant said of Young. “But I think, at the NBA level, he was like, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ … That kind of opened the doors for Kevin to come in and shine, when people moved on.

“Coach giving him that confidence to kind of lead, to me, is when I saw, ‘Wow, he’s got something. He’s special.’”

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Young continued that trajectory when, after Brown’s staff was let go in 2020, Young rekindled a Sixers connection by joining Williams with the Suns. That team reached the NBA Finals in 2021, held the league’s best regular-season record in 2022-23, and boasted an offense ranked in the top 10 in efficiency in three out of four seasons.

His growing resumé — and reputation with stars such as perennial All-Star Devin Booker — made him a finalist for Phoenix’s head job in 2023. He also drew interest for the Brooklyn Nets and Charlotte Hornets openings last summer.

Then, BYU entered the list of possibilities when Mark Pope left to replace John Calipari at Kentucky.

Young called Lange, who stressed asking the school for the financial resources to build a proper staff and provide competitive name, image, and likeness compensation. He also spoke to Pierce, who viewed this as the latest executive decision that Young had already become used to making as a head coach. He shared the news with Brown and Bryant.

They understood why the move made sense, professionally and personally.

“He believes in the BYU mission,” Lange said. “… He’s going to represent BYU. Like, that’s his dream. That’s where he wants to be. That’s not a steppingstone for him. That’s what he wants to do.

“The overall picture of Kevin Young, leading BYU, as a Mormon, to the Sweet 16 is just a great story.”

During Young’s introductory press conference last spring, he said that the first time he linked with BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe and deputy athletic director Brian Santiago was “about four or five years ago” while in Philly, through a “mutual connection.”

“Some seeds were planted in the back of my mind,” Young told the crowd then. “I thought, ‘Maybe one day, that’s something that would happen.’ Never in a million years thought it would happen in the timeline that it did, but I’m a firm believer that everything truly does happen for a reason.”

Fast-forward to Wednesday, and Young reiterated his quest to make BYU, which is now in the Big 12 after decades as a mid-major, “the best place in college basketball to help guys get to the league.”

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Wing Egor Demin — a lottery prospect in June’s NBA draft — said Wednesday that his primary reason for choosing the Cougars was “because of ‘KY’ coming from the NBA.” AJ Dybantsa, the top-rated recruit in the 2025 class, has already signed for next season. That the school, a flagship of the LDS church, has passionate megadonors certainly does not hurt in this still-evolving NIL era of college athletics.

Yet when Pierce watches the Cougars, he sees that Young’s “hands and his mind are all over that program” in the way they push the ball and launch from beyond the arc as one of the country’s highest-scoring teams. Multiple BYU staff members — including chief of staff Doug Stewart and assistant coach John Linehan — can be traced back to the Sixers segment of Young’s career. And Bryant loves spotting Young on the sideline because everything from his mannerisms to his Nike shoes signal that he is “the same guy.”

Bryant and Young just missed out on an in-person reunion last week, when the Bulls happened to be in Denver right after BYU departed after winning its first- and second-round games at Ball Arena. But the longtime friends did keep a tradition alive of sending each other a selfie in front of the Rocket Fizz Soda Pop & Candy Shop on Latimer St.

“He sent one with his whole family,” Bryant said. “He was like, ‘We bought up the whole store. I hope we left some for you.’”

The family Young and Bryant used to discuss on the back of his pickup truck in Delaware. Consider that another example of how Young continues to carry that formative Sixers stretch with him, even in a dream season in a dream new job.

“That crew of guys, we’re all still really, really close,” Young said. “And we all learned from each other. Super invaluable time for me, for sure.”