The Chicago Bulls got a solid hire in store on Nov. 2 with the addition of former Milwaukee Bucks assistant Josh Longstaff to Billy Donovan’s staff.
The Chicago Bulls coaching staff is really starting to round out under the direction of recently hired head coach (formerly of the Oklahoma City Thunder and Florida Gators hoops program) Billy Donovan. Back on Aug. 14, the Bulls parted ways with now former head coach Jim Boylen after two disappointing years at the helm.
Then a little more than a month later, the Bulls hired the ex-Thunder head coach Donovan (specifically on Sep. 22) to lead this team heading into the fourth year of the rebuild. Donovan is a good hire for the Bulls it seems, and a proven winner from his time as a head coach at both the college and NBA levels.
And one of the first significant moves that Donovan made as the Bulls head coach this offseason was parting ways with four key assistants that traced back to when Tom Thibodeau as the skipper for this team. Some of the more significant assistant coaches that Donovan parted ways with included Roy Rogers and Karen Stack Umlauf.
Since then, the Bulls have added a few assistants of Donovan’s choosing to the coaching staff. One of the most recent hirings that was announced on the morning of Nov. 2 (from the Twitter timeline of ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski) was with former Milwaukee Bucks assistant Josh Longstaff.
The Bulls are hiring Bucks assistant Josh Longstaff for Billy Donovan’s coaching staff, sources tell ESPN. For Longstaff, it is an opportunity to elevate to a front-of-the-bench assistant.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) November 2, 2020
Longstaff held various roles around the NBA as an assistant, and in the G/D-League. His coaching career started out in the early days of the Thunder franchise, as their player personnel coordinator (entering the 2010-11 season). He worked his way through various roles for the Thunder, including video analyst and player development coach, through the end of the 2013-14 season.
His first major assistant coaching job came with the New York Knicks entering the 2015-16 season. But that only stuck for a short period of time before he took over as the head coach of the G-League Erie Bayhawks during the 2017 offseason.
Longstaff would make his return to the NBA coaching ranks heading into the 2018-19 season, the first year he was an assistant on staff with head coach Mike Budenholzer and the Bucks. He will join a staff that now also includes Chris Fleming and former Philadelphia 76ers assistant John Bryant.
The Bulls finished up with a record of 22-43 during the 2019-20 season. That led to Boylen posting a record of 39-84 over the course of his two years as Bulls head coach. Donovan was one of the big hirings for the Bulls this offseason, along with Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley, among others.