If loving Billy Donovan is wrong, the Chicago Bulls don\u2019t want to be right.<\/p>\n
The Bulls haven\u2019t formally started their search for their next head of basketball operations, but president\/CEO Michael Reinsdorf made one thing clear Tuesday: whoever gets the job will have to inherit Donovan as coach. That is, if Donovan wants to stay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Billy wants to be our coach,\u201d Reinsdorf said, \u201cand someone\u2019s not interested in that, then they\u2019re probably not the right candidate for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reinsdorf cited Donovan\u2019s Hall of Fame career, his multiple national titles at Florida and a deep playoff run in Oklahoma City, noting that \u201cgiven the team that he was given (in Chicago), I think he achieved really good results. Not the results we wanted, but that\u2019s not because of Billy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donovan is 224-254 in Chicago going into Tuesday\u2019s game against the Washington Wizards. He has made the playoffs once in six seasons.<\/p>\n
In an email responding to follow-up questions from The Athletic, Reinsdorf wrote that Donovan\u2019s status won\u2019t be taking \u201cprecedence in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe point I was making is that he is a good coach,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a candidate out there who would not want to interview with us because I\u2019d like Billy to remain as our coach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donovan, who signed a multiyear contract extension last summer, was in the mix for the North Carolina job, but he had been adamant about waiting until the Bulls\u2019 season was over to decide on his future. He will meet with Reinsdorf next week once the season concludes.<\/p>\n
Asked how Donovan\u2019s decision might affect the team\u2019s approach to the summer \u2014 the NBA\u2019s Draft Lottery will be held May 10, with the combine during the next week \u2014 Reinsdorf said, \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to take Billy a long time to come to a conclusion on what he wants to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Donovan was hired in 2020, he said he wanted input on player acquisitions \u2014 though after the Jaden Ivey debacle, he said he wasn\u2019t consulted on that move \u2014 and Reinsdorf said that won\u2019t change with the next hire.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably will push Billy to be more involved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Donovan hasn\u2019t expressed interest in moving into a front-office role, but if he did, the Bulls would entertain the idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he came to me and said, \u2018Hey, I may want to do a Brad Stevens situation,\u2019 I would sit down and listen to Billy,\u201d Reinsdorf said. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s where his head\u2019s at. I don\u2019t think Billy cares about titles. Billy cares about being a head coach, and he cares about the players and cares about the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday afternoon, Reinsdorf talked to Chicago reporters on a video call for 30 minutes about how the organization got to this low point and what he\u2019s going to do to make sure the Bulls return to relevance and the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re going to do through this process is we\u2019re going to look at all the organizations and say what are things that we really admire about these teams?\u201d Reinsdorf said. \u201cWhat are they doing that we haven\u2019t been doing? What can we do differently?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bulls didn\u2019t have much success under the former regime, so when did Reinsdorf decide to make a drastic change?<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the last few months, I started looking at where we were at, and I thought to myself, how are we going to get out of this mess?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Bulls will use a search firm for the first time in hopes of casting a \u201cwide net.\u201d Reinsdorf said the firm will \u201chelp organize the candidate pool,\u201d but he isn\u2019t sure how the process will go yet.<\/p>\n
Reinsdorf said he\u2019s not sure who else will be in the room with him for interviews. John Paxson, the team\u2019s longtime head of basketball operations, will help him as a consultant, and Pat Connelly and JJ Polk, assistant GMs during the recent regime, will also help guide the search.<\/p>\n
The Art\u016bras Karni\u0161ovas search in 2020 was novel in the organization\u2019s modern history. Paxson was hired as the Bulls\u2019 GM in 2003, replacing Jerry Krause, who took the job in 1985, replacing Rod Thorn, who predated Jerry Reinsdorf\u2019s buying the team.<\/p>\n
What is the younger Reinsdorf looking for this time around?<\/p>\n
\u201cI want someone who\u2019s process-oriented,\u201d he said. \u201cI think some of the biggest mistakes we\u2019ve made over the years is we have not followed a process. I think that\u2019s really important. Conviction. I think we need someone who is not afraid to pull the trigger. Communicator, OK? We have a history at the Bulls in the top position, other than (Paxson), they haven\u2019t always been the best communicators, going back to the days of Jerry Krause. It wasn\u2019t one of Art\u016bras\u2019 strengths in terms of communicating with the media. I want someone who\u2019s really strong in communication, not just internally within the organization, but also externally.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he\u2019s talking to people like you, talking to our fans, I think that\u2019s really important. What are we trying to accomplish? What is the plan? Our fans have a right to understand what we\u2019re trying to accomplish. So, I think that\u2019s incredibly important.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the very least, Reinsdorf, who took over as president\/COO of the team in 2010, seems to now have a better assessment of the organization\u2019s failures over that time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t always recognized the trends of where things are going,\u201d he said. \u201cBack in 2012 or \u201913, whenever the 3-point shooting started to increase, I bet you had we anticipated that more and how much that was going to change, we probably would have had a different decision-making on some of the players that we drafted,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, you\u2019ve got to stay ahead of this. That\u2019s something Sam (Presti) is really good at, is anticipating. So, we\u2019ve got to anticipate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aligning with the Reinsdorfs\u2019 position on rebuilding\/tanking\/teardowns also seems to be among the caveats awaiting the next decision-maker.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone out there who knows anything about my dad, they know how much he believes in being real and doing your best to win games,\u201d Michael said of his father, Jerry, who has been the lead owner of the Bulls and White Sox since the 1980s. \u201cAnd it\u2019s unfair to the coach. It is unfair to the players. It\u2019s actually unfair to our fans. Sure, there are some fans, many fans who might say, \u2018Lose games on purpose, tank, do whatever you can to hopefully win the lottery.\u2019 But there are a lot of fans that go to the games who aren\u2019t there to see us get blown out every game and who want to see us compete.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever comes in and takes this position, they have to understand, we want to win, but we don\u2019t want to win if it\u2019s not sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the candidates still on the line, Reinsdorf laid out what he considers the attractions for the Bulls job: The Bulls own all their first-round draft picks, presumably entering this year\u2019s draft with the ninth-best odds and potentially (finally) receiving a first-round selection in the midteens if the Portland Trail Blazers advance to the playoffs; an unknown commodity in rookie Noa Essengue, who Reinsdorf said is \u201calmost like having a second top-10 pick because he didn\u2019t play all last year\u201d; and roughly $65 million to toy with in cap space.<\/p>\n
A clean slate, he called it, some time after noting the next decision-maker possibly won\u2019t hire their own coach and should forget about tanking.<\/p>\n
What then becomes the bar to measure said candidate\u2019s success?<\/p>\n
\u201cYou define success in many different ways,\u201d Reinsdorf said. \u201cBut ultimately, for our fans and for the media, I think it\u2019s going to be about wins and losses.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If loving Billy Donovan is wrong, the Chicago Bulls don\u2019t want to be right. The Bulls haven\u2019t formally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[7,920,919,329,3824,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-704217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bulls","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bulls","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-bulls","12":"tag-chicagobulls","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116366125588506766","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704217","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=704217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}