3. Bad relationships with his players
Remember when the Chicago Bulls won a game and the entire team celebrated together and ignored their head coach in the process?
Remember when rising star shooting guard Zach LaVine was fined and it was reported that Boylen paid for it just to make it seem like they were able to reprimand their relationship?
And remember when veteran power forward Thaddeus Young wanted out of the Windy City less than one season into his tenure here just due to his unnecessary change in role?
There’s a lot of dysfunction that sticks from the top-down in this Bulls organization, but Boylen draws a lot of the negative attention to himself. The Bulls can’t beat any good teams with him at the helm and they also don’t seem to have the buy-in of the players with the head coach. And that culture likely existed since day one of Boylen taking over as the Bulls interim head coach.
In his tenure as the Bulls head coach thus far, Boylen has a record of 37-79. Of the 20 wins that the Bulls have so far, only one came against an opponent with a winning record at the time. And that win is still confounding, as it came over a true title contender in Paul George and the Los Angeles Clippers at home back in December.
Most of all, Boylen can’t manage his players well. Player development just hasn’t existed really since Hoiberg was the head coach of the Bulls. Power forward Lauri Markkanen hasn’t made many strides, rookie point guard Coby White is off to a slow start, and Young and Tomas Satoransky aren’t getting their skill sets maximized.
Any video of “Boylenisms” will be a good watch once the Bulls are done with him, but for now it’s a sad reminder of what still exists in the Windy City.