Former Chicago Bulls assistant coach Roy Rogers appears to have interest coming from head coach Doc Rivers and the Philadelphia 76ers to join their staff.
The reshaping of the Chicago Bulls current coaching staff, after the hiring of the former Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Billy Donovan, is largely underway. It all started with Donovan parting ways with a good portion of the assistant coaches on staff under the likes of former head coaches Jim Boylen, Fred Hoiberg, and even Tom Thibodeau.
Maybe the most significant of the four assistant coaches that Donovan parted with earlier in the offseason is the longtime bench coach around the NBA and former Vancouver Grizzlies big man Roy Rogers. On staff for just the 2019-20 regular season with the Bulls, he wasn’t around in Chicago for very long.
Boylen brought Rogers aboard on his coaching staff as an assistant along with the former Brooklyn Nets assistant Chris Fleming last offseason. While Fleming appears that he will remain on staff with the Bulls heading into the 2020-21 season, Rogers will not be returning.
Prior to landing with the Bulls staff last year, he was an assistant coach with the Houston Rockets from the 2016-17 campaign through the end of the 2018-19 season. He’s also had other stops as an assistant coach around the NBA with the Detroit Pistons, Boston Celtics, Nets, and Washington Wizards.
His run as an assistant coach in the NBA started out with the Nets back during the 2009-10 season. He’s been well traveled and is well respected around the NBA since taking that job with the Nets more than a decade ago.
Now that Rogers is on the open coaching market again, it didn’t feel like it would be long before he had another team going after him. And according to a report from Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer on his Twitter timeline, newly hired head coach Doc Rivers and the Philadelphia 76ers are interested in adding Rogers to their coaching staff.
#Sixers coach Doc Rivers is interested in adding former Chicago Bulls assistant coach Roy Rogers to his coaching staff, according to a league source. In addition to the Bulls, the widely respected coach had assistant coaching stints with the #Rockets, #Wizards and #Nets. pic.twitter.com/KCzrjHm3IG
— Keith Pompey (@PompeyOnSixers) October 21, 2020
Rivers was brought on board as the Sixers next skipper after they parted ways with former head coach Brett Brown following a disappointing end to the 2019-20 season. The six-seed Sixers were swept by the three-seed Celtics in the first round of the playoffs in the bubble at Disney World this year.
Rivers himself didn’t have the best end to his coaching tenure with the Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers parted ways with Rivers after the two-seed relinquished a commanding 3-1 series lead in the second round of the playoffs to the three-seed Denver Nuggets.
The Bulls finished up with a record of 22-43 under Boylen’s direction during the 2019-20 shortened regular season, good for 11th place in the Eastern Conference standings. That led to management parting ways with Boylen following a tenure where he registered a record of 39-84 over the course of two years as the Bulls head coach.