Entering the crucial 2020-21 regular season, the Chicago Bulls have a lot of players in their young core that will have a lot of pressure to improve fast.
There’s a lot on the line for this Chicago Bulls young core in general for this season, as they enter the fourth year of this seemingly endless rebuild. The difference this year for the Bulls is the fact that there were so many organizational changes from the top down.
They hired Arturas Karnisovas as the executive vice president of basketball operations, replacing John Paxson as the lead voice in the front office. And then Karnisovas hired Marc Eversley to replace Gar Forman as the Bulls general manager.
The other significant hire that the Bulls made, among the trio of big additions from the front office down to the coaching staff, was replacing Jim Boylen with former Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Billy Donovan. The Bulls got a proven winner to replace Boylen (who registered a record of 39-84 in his two years as head coach) in Donovan.
During his five years as the Thunder head coach, Donovan registered a regular season record of 243-157 (.608 winning percentage). He was largely let go, it seemed, due to a lack of overall postseason success in OKC. But at least he got to the postseason with his team.
Just before the Thunder let go of Donovan earlier this year, he was named a Coach of the Year finalist (although he didn’t ultimately take home the honors). He really fell into the Bulls lap back in September.
Moreover, this Bulls young core should be able to very much benefit from this upgrade to the coaching staff and front office. But there’s still going to be a lot of pressure on the shoulders of a lot of the more critical Bulls players this season.
Here’s a look into the three Bulls players with the most on the line for the 2020-21 season.