Chicago Bulls: Players are being ignored by new front office

It doesn’t look like the locker room, coaching staff, front office, or ownership are in good shape for the Chicago Bulls entering the offseason.

There’s a number of concerns that are looming at this point in time in the Chicago Bulls camp as the 2020 offseason brings nothing but mixed feelings. Fans in the Windy City can’t be happy about the lack of chain reaction events that happened since the Reinsdorfs finally made the move to enact long-needed front office changes back in spring.

Back in April, the dominoes started to fall in the Bulls front office as former vice president of basketball operations John Paxson was demoted in favor of former Denver Nuggets general manager Arturas Karnisovas. The official title for Karnisovas with the Bulls will be executive vice president of basketball operations.

And the Bulls also let go of former general manager Gar Forman in favor of the former Philadelphia 76ers vice president of player personnel Marc Eversley.

However, bringing Karnisovas and Eversley into the mix isn’t having the impact that was once anticipated from Bulls fans around the country and the world. The Bulls still don’t have any concrete known plans for the roster construction, and mainly head coach Jim Boylen is still around in the Windy City.

The latter of those two facts that have not been changed for the Bulls yet seems to be a growing problem in the locker room. According to a report from Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times on July 29, the Bulls players are getting increasingly concerned and frustrated that their voices aren’t being heard in regards to the head coaching situation heading into the offseason.

Here’s more on what this report had to say on the matter.

"“One of my mottos is ‘players first,’ ‘’ new general manager Marc Eversley said on the day he was officially introduced to the media back in May. “I think you have to create a players-first mentality.’’So when exactly is that going to start?Fair or unfair, the locker room is not completely sold that current head coach Jim Boylen is the guy for the job moving forward.It’s been expressed very publicly by the likes of Denzel Valentine and second-round pick Daniel Gafford, and it’s also been expressed privately with the Sun-Times reporting that several key players were very open with executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas in initial conversations that went on when Karnisovas was hired, painting a very mixed review of the job Boylen had been doing."

This report once again brings up the fact that all that the Bulls and Chicago White Sox long-time owner Jerry Reinsdorf cares about is the bottom line and lining up his pockets. The success of the Bulls organization over the long haul was never the main priority for Reinsdorf. As long as they’re making a profit, he’s good with the status quo, no matter what other problems are looming.

All of this will continue to put the new-look front office regime in a difficult spot since there is growing impatience around the Bulls locker room and in the fan base. But Reinsdorf isn’t going to want to budge on anything that is going to hurt his pocketbook, and Boylen is the cheap and easy option at the moment.

But can you really blame these Bulls players that stuck around for three years of a now-collapsing rebuild already for being increasingly frustrated?

The Bulls finished up the 2019-20 regular season with a record of 22-43 prior to the novel coronavirus pandemic-induced hiatus back in mid-March. That now brings Boylen to a total record of 39-84 in two years as the Bulls head coach.

If Boylen does wind up sticking around as the Bulls head coach heading into the 2020-21 season, then the frustration could really start to boil over with the players, media, and fan base, alike. Reactions around the Bulls social media-sphere already doesn’t look great right now.