{"id":183461,"date":"2025-07-20T13:57:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T13:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/183461\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T13:57:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T13:57:22","slug":"valley-suns-john-little-joins-otts-phoenix-suns-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/183461\/","title":{"rendered":"Valley Suns&#8217; John Little joins Ott&#8217;s Phoenix Suns staff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;right:0;bottom:0;width:100%;height:100%;z-index:2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/84140979007-1-rs-3793-copy.JPG\"\/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"vidplayicon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/appservices\/universal-web\/universal\/icons\/icon-play-alt-white.svg\" alt=\"play\" style=\"height:40px;margin:auto 18px auto 27px;width:40px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Suns new coach Jordan Ott explains how he plans to prove his talent<\/p>\n<p>Phoenix Suns news head coach Jordan Ott talks about his philosophy and general manager Brian Gregory speaks to why they chose Ott.<\/p>\n<p>John Little joins the Phoenix Suns coaching staff as an assistant under head coach Jordan Ott.Little previously coached the Suns&#8217; G League affiliate, the Valley Suns, leading them to the conference semifinals.<\/p>\n<p>First-year <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/phoenix-suns\/21\/\" data-autotag=\"5b1d8499-f4c6-4857-a8e9-6d2e8a35bac3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Phoenix Suns<\/a> head coach Jordan Ott will have John Little on his staff as an assistant coach, league sources have informed The Arizona Republic.<\/p>\n<p>Little served as head coach of their G League team, the Valley Suns, during their inaugural season in 2024-25. The Valley Suns reached the 2025 G League playoffs under Little and advanced to the conference semifinals before losing to the eventual G League champion Stockton Kings.<\/p>\n<p>Stockton is the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/sacramento-kings\/23\/\" data-autotag=\"3167e433-c189-4ca5-b7ab-4c9e41dbb11b\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sacramento Kings<\/a>&#8216; G League team.<\/p>\n<p>Little has been in Las Vegas working as an assistant for the Suns&#8217; summer league team. Phoenix plays its final summer league game Saturday, July 19, against the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/portland-trail-blazers\/22\/\" data-autotag=\"ebbd75c8-2661-4cdf-9293-f30f46f12e95\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Portland Trail Blazers<\/a> at Cox Pavilion (6:30 p.m., NBA TV).<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;It&#8217;s great. Obviously we want to kind of change the identity here. We want to compete at a high level. These guys have been doing it. The past two days, they&#8217;ve been competing at a high level.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Suns assistant DeMarre Carroll on approach to Summer League as he&#8217;ll be head coach.\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/A2ONECcwko\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/A2ONECcwko<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Duane Rankin (@DuaneRankin) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DuaneRankin\/status\/1942709126871802133?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">July 8, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Suns have Jesse Mermuys, DeMarre Carroll, Brian Randle, Chaisson Allen and Little on Ott\u2019s coaching staff with Mateen Cleaves serving as a player development coach.<\/p>\n<p>Carroll has been the team&#8217;s summer league head coach with Allen and Little on his staff. Ott, Randle and Mermuys have been in attendance, watching the games courtside.<\/p>\n<p>A 2006 Northern Iowa graduate, Little played overseas for eight years as a guard. He returned to Northern Iowa and worked as a video coordinator for two years (2017-19).<\/p>\n<p>He was on the Wisconsin Herd\u2019s coaching staff for four seasons (2019-23). The Herd are the Milwaukee Bucks\u2019 G League team. Little was an assistant there under Allen from 2021-23.<\/p>\n<p>Little then joined the Maine Celtics as an assistant for one season (2023-24), helping the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/boston-celtics\/2\/\" data-autotag=\"593bbaa3-06f5-4574-8d4d-eda805c7dc23\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Boston Celtics<\/a>&#8216; G League team earn the No. 2 seed and reach the 2024 G League finals.<\/p>\n<p>Have opinions about the current state of the\u00a0Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:dmrankin@gannett.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dmrankin@gannett.com<\/a>\u00a0or contact him at 480-810-5518. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DuaneRankin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">@DuaneRankin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Support local journalism: Subscribe to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cm.azcentral.com\/specialoffer?gps-source=CPNEWS&amp;utm_medium=onsite&amp;utm_source=TAGLINE&amp;utm_campaign=NEWSROOM&amp;utm_content=JEREMYCLUFF\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">azcentral.com<\/a>\u00a0today.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Suns new coach Jordan Ott explains how he plans to prove his talent Phoenix Suns news head coach&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3791],"tags":[2126,1085,7,601,45,75,46,1364,777,2127,2125,4056,2501,70,85,6,3494,841,62,67,61,81,2065,472,4045,687,471,986,477,66,1935,83,55,2128,3166,604,688,1930,73,831],"class_list":{"0":"post-183461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix-suns","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-az","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-blazers","12":"tag-boston","13":"tag-boston-celtics","14":"tag-celtics","15":"tag-coaching","16":"tag-conference","17":"tag-enabled","18":"tag-highlights","19":"tag-kings","20":"tag-league","21":"tag-national","22":"tag-national-sports","23":"tag-nba","24":"tag-nba-summer-league","25":"tag-nba-western-conference","26":"tag-neutral","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-overall","29":"tag-overall-neutral","30":"tag-phoenix","31":"tag-phoenix-suns","32":"tag-phoenixsuns","33":"tag-portland","34":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","35":"tag-sacramento","36":"tag-sacramento-kings","37":"tag-sports","38":"tag-sports-coaching-u0026-training","39":"tag-sports-news","40":"tag-story","41":"tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","42":"tag-summer","43":"tag-suns","44":"tag-trail","45":"tag-training","46":"tag-u0026","47":"tag-western"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}