Chicago Bulls: Billy Donovan rounds out hires to his coaching staff

The next direction of the rebuild for the Chicago Bulls heading into its fourth year became clearer with the announcement of more hirings this weekend.

More hires were announced for the coaching staff, front office, and player development department within the Chicago Bulls organization this weekend. The Bulls were still going through the process of retooling a lot of their more specific positions in the front office, coaching staff, etc. even after the hire of the former Oklahoma City Thunder skipper Billy Donovan to replace Jim Boylen as their next head coach.

The Bulls hired Donovan to replace Boylen as their head coach heading into the fourth year of the rebuild back on Sep. 22. And newly hired executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley officially parted ways with Boylen back on Aug. 14.

Since then, most of the significant changes within the Bulls organization were any hirings/firings made on the coaching staff. Donovan parted ways with former integral assistants like Roy Rogers and Karen Stack-Umlauf, among other, within the last six weeks. And he’s made a number of solid hires to round out the coaching staff in the weeks following.

A lot of those hires were officially announced for the Bulls on Nov. 14. Known hirings like Josh Longstaff, Maurice Cheeks, and John Bryant were made official. But other announcements like the hiring of Damian Cotter and Billy Schmidt as assistant coaches to Donovan’s staff were ones that became public firmly on Nov. 14, thanks to an official release on NBA.com.

Donovan and the Bulls also rounded out part of the player development staff with the hirings that were announced on Nov. 14. They reportedly hired the following people to join the player development staff: Henry Domercant, Ronnie Burrell, Ty Abbott and Max Rothschild.

Cotter was the head coach of the Chicago Bulls G-League affiliate Windy City Bulls last season, and was an assistant for other G-League teams in the years preceding that role.

And Schmidt held various roles on staff with the Thunder while Donovan was their head coach. He was most recently an assistant coach on Donovan’s staff with the Thunder and the director of quality control.

There could be more additions to the Bulls organization that are announced in the coming weeks. But most of them are likely already official since the 2020 NBA Draft and start of the next cycle of free agency are less than four days away at this point.