Chicago Bulls: Front office felt Donovan was a ‘natural fit’
A popular move it seems so far from all sides was the Chicago Bulls hiring former OKC Thunder head coach Billy Donovan to replace Jim Boylen.
The Chicago Bulls new front office personnel are already making waves within the organization to reshape the look of the rebuild heading into its fourth year. Newly hired executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley have made a ton of changes in a matter of just a few months to hopefully provide for a more promising direction of this team in the very near future.
The most recent significant change that the Bulls front office personnel made this offseason was the hiring on the afternoon of Sep. 22 of former Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Billy Donovan to assume the same role in Chicago. The Bulls are replacing the now former head coach Jim Boylen with Donovan. Karnisovas and Eversley originally parted ways with Boylen back on Aug. 14.
Meanwhile, the Thunder parted ways with Donovan following their seven-game first round playoff series loss (as the five-seed) at the hands of superstar guard James Harden and the four-seed Houston Rockets. Donovan went from being a Coach of the Year award finalist to seeing the door out of OKC in a matter of just weeks.
Why the Bulls hired Billy Donovan and what it says about where they’re going https://t.co/9IAdsAiROP
— Darnell Mayberry (@DarnellMayberry) September 23, 2020
However, the Thunder’s loss winds up being the Bulls’ gain in this situation. Donovan and former Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni were about as proven as it gets on the open coaching market right now. And the Bulls snatched in Donovan less than a month after the Thunder fired him.
It sounds like the fit between Karnisovas and Eversley and then Donovan as head coach was seamless. A piece from Darnell Mayberry of The Athletic this week (paid content), specified that both parties were impressed with what the other brought to the table in this situation.
Having a sound relationship between the lead voices in the front office and an actually competent head coach should be a whole different world for this Bulls organization. This is something that sounds foreign to most Bulls fans in terms of having a good level of consistency and competency both on the coaching staff and in the front office.
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Donovan rounded up his five years as the Thunder head coach with a regular season record of 243-157 (.609 winning percentage). His playoff record with the Thunder sat at 18-23 (.439 winning percentage). That is much better than the 39-84 record that Boylen posted over the course of his two years as the Bulls head coach.