2) Assistants the Chicago Bulls should consider hiring: David Vanterpool
Another 47-year-old NBA assistant coach that is a hot name on the market right now to make the jump to get a head coaching job is the Minnesota Timberwolves associate head coach David Vanterpool. The former St. Bonaventure 6-foot-5 and 200 pound point guard and Daytona Beach, FL, native Vanterpool brings a lot of intrigue as a head coaching candidate too.
Vanterpool only played one season in the NBA, where he suited up in 22 games for the Washington Wizards during the 2000-01 season, at the age of 27. In those 22 games played for the Wizards, Vanterpool averaged 5.5 points per game, 1.7 rebounds, and 3.0 assists. He spent most of the rest of his professional basketball career playing in the D-League, or overseas.
The coaching career of Vanterpool began more than a decade ago overseas. He was hired as an assistant coach in Russia, with CSKA Moscow prior to the start of the 2007-08 season. And he stuck with that same organization through the end of the 2011-12 campaign. That’s when Vanterpool landed his first assistant coaching job in the NBA.
He was a lead assistant with the Portland Trail Blazers throughout most of the 2010’s. He stuck on staff in Portland starting in the 2012-13 season, and all the way through the 2018-19 campaign. The Timberwolves brought him aboard as the associate head coach back in June 2019. And he did pretty good work on the offensive end of the floor in the season that was with point guard D’Angelo Russell, star big man Karl-Anthony Towns, and the Timberwolves.