Chicago Bulls: 3 best HC candidates passed up for Billy Donovan

A seemingly good move for the Chicago Bulls to hire Billy Donovan as their next head coach did mean passing up on a few solid candidates.

It is worth noting while the Chicago Bulls got a pretty tremendous head coaching hire out of the former Oklahoma City Thunder and Florida Gators basketball head coach Billy Donovan, there were other solid candidates out there. The Bulls replaced former head coach Jim Boylen, who they parted ways with back on Aug. 14, with Donovan to try and get the rebuild going in the right direction heading into its fourth year.

Donovan was hired back on Sep. 22 to be the third head coach of the Bulls over the course of the last two years. Hopefully he brings more stability to the table than Boylen, or former head coach Fred Hoiberg (now with the Nebraska Cornhuskers basketball program), did in the last few years. Hoiberg was a better head coach than Boylen, but neither worked out well over the long run for this rebuilding team.

The Thunder parted ways with Donovan after five years at the helm in OKC. He held a regular season record of 243-157 during his five years as the Thunder head coach (.609 winning percentage). And his playoff record sat at 18-23 (.429 winning percentage), which is likely one of the reasons why management moved on from him.

Just a few weeks prior to getting let go by OKC, Donovan was a Coach of the Year finalist. While the honors wound up falling to the defending NBA Champion and Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse, it was still a big nod for Donovan who did a really impressive job with a sleeper Thunder team in the Western Conference.

All in all, who could the Bulls have considered instead of Donovan to be their next head coach, and who did they pass up on that was a good candidate to hire him?