Chicago Bulls: Management judges Boylen’s success beyond record

There is a very mixed outlook for how the 2020 offseason will go for the Chicago Bulls, including what to do with Jim Boylen.

The judgment of the job that head coach Jim Boylen has done so far in his tenure with the Chicago Bulls is pretty much unanimously poor across basketball media and fans. Boylen is showing off some of the weirdest antics in a short tenure as an NBA head coach compared to really anything we’ve ever seen before.

However, the Bulls management and ownership seems to be fine with the results in the win column at the moment. Despite the Bulls carrying a 20-39 record nearly 60 games into the third year of the rebuild, vice president of basketball operations John Paxson and general manager Gar Forman are holding steady for their backing of Boylen.

According to a report from K.C. Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago, even if the Bulls change their front office personnel this summer, Boylen is still clinging to the thought of what he was hired for. Apparently the way ownership and management views Boylen’s success is by a different measuring stick than how most of the rest of the NBA would.

Here’s what Boylen had to say in that piece that was published by Johnson after the Bulls fell short in disappointing fashion on Feb. 25 at home at the hands of the Oklahoma City Thunder by the final score of 124-122.

"“It is a win-loss league but that’s not the only thing that gets evaluated. Are we establishing a style of play? I think we have. Have we cleaned up our defense that needed to be cleaned up? I think we have. Have we established a shot profile that’s top five in the league? I think we’re three right now in the shots we get compared to other teams. So, those are all positive things,” he said. “And then you can look at the ‘what-ifs,’ which I don’t do very often. With our shot profile, what would Otto Porter do in that shot profile? He’d be pretty successful. And Lauri Markkanen and right on down the line.“I’m not worried about my personal record or my win-loss record. I’ve been asked to establish a style of play, to have a disciplined approach and develop a young group of guys. And in my opinion, we are doing that. Case in point – Coby White’s improvement, Daniel Gafford’s improvement. Cris Felicio, I think, is doing a heckuva job for us. So play the guys you have and hopefully make them better.”"

The Bulls couldn’t even nab the win with how well rookie point guard Coby White played, posting yet another career-high in points. Shooting guard Zach LaVine also went off for more than 40 points in that loss to the Thunder.

Next up on the slate for Boylen and the Bulls is a showdown with the New York Knicks on Feb. 29 on the road at Madison Square Garden. Now that the Bulls sit more than six games behind the Orlando Magic for the eight seed in the Eastern Conference standings, it should be time to start focusing on the 2020 offseason.