Chicago Bulls: 3 players that benefit most from hire of Billy Donovan

Hiring former OKC Thunder head coach Billy Donovan could really benefit a number of the players on the current Chicago Bulls roster.

Maybe the biggest head coaching hire in the Eastern Conference so far this offseason came with a big market team earlier this week, when the Chicago Bulls hired former Oklahoma City Thunder HC Billy Donovan to replace Jim Boylen in the same role. The Bulls made the move to hire Donovan after he was one of the more shocking head coaching departures of the offseason so far.

Just weeks before the Thunder let him go, Donovan was one of the Coach of the Year award finalists. The honors wound up going to Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse, but Donovan still did one of the more impressive coaching jobs of any team during the 2019-20 season.

Donovan led the Thunder to post a regular season record of 44-28, good for fifth in the Western Conference standings/playoff seeding. Although the Thunder were ousted in the first round of the playoffs by the four-seed Houston Rockets, they were just seconds away from being the team that advanced to the second round.

The job that Donovan did with the Thunder this season was so great because of the roster he was working with. He led a Thunder team that had an aging Chris Paul and Danilo Gallinari, along with a talented but still young and raw Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, to finish well ahead of teams like the Utah Jazz, Portland Trail Blazers, New Orleans Pelicans, etc., that were all anticipated to be better.

While the Thunder were surprising everyone in the West, the Bulls were floundering this season under Boylen’s direction. The Bulls finished up with a record of 22-43 during the 2019-20 shortened season, good for 11th place in the Eastern Conference standings. But now the Bulls have a real shot to improve heading into next season.

Here’s a look into the three Bulls players that benefit the most from the hiring of Donovan as their next head coach.