With the addition of Taj Gibson to the Bulls coaching staff for the 2026-27 season, that got me wondering: which Bulls players went on to have the best coaching career? In order to answer that incredibly pressing question, I have ranked all seven former Bulls who went on to coach in the NBA.
Before we dive into the rankings, I think it’s fair to say that the Bulls have had a wider range of results in this department than any other team in the NBA. This list will start with some truly dreadful coaches, but it ends with all-time greats.
7. Sam Vincent
Vincent played for the Bulls for a season and a half in the late ‘80s, and honestly didn’t do much as a player in Chicago. The biggest impact on his career that happened in Chicago is he was teammates with Michael Jordan.
20 years later, Jordan was running basketball operations for the Charlotte Bobcats. He hired Vincent as head coach, and that tenure lasted exactly 82 games. A 32-50 record as head coach meant that Vincent only held that role for one season and was never offered another chance. Though to be fair, that’s honestly not a terrible record when compared with the history of all the Bobcats seasons.
6. Reggie Theus
If coaching the Bobcats is a bad omen, it isn’t much better to have served as head coach of the Sacramento Kings. Reggie Theus started his head coaching career at New Mexico State, where he had moderate success. He made the jump from Conference USA to the Western Conference when he was hired to replace Eric Musselman in Sacramento for the 2007-08 season. That first year he led the team to a 38-44 record, but the following season the team started 6-18, which meant Theus was let go on December 15th, 2008.
5. Bill Cartwright
The most legendary Bulls player to go on to a coaching career is most likely Bill Cartwright. The Bulls acquired the big man in 1988 for Charles Oakley, and he went on to be the starting center for the first three Chicago championship teams. In addition to those three rings, he won another two as an assistant coach during the second three-peat.
His head coaching tenure unfortunately doesn’t improve his resume. He was hired as head coach in December 2001 after Tim Floyd resigned. Cartwright was the head coach for parts of two seasons in addition to his one full season (2002-03). His career record was 51-100.
4. Pete Myers
Pete Myers is best known for being the guy who took over as the Bulls’ starting shooting guard when Michael Jordan retired in order to pursue his baseball career. He didn’t have much of a head coaching tenure. He served as interim head coach in a grand total of three games, and he lost all of them.
However, the reason he’s not at the bottom of the list is he had a lengthy (and fairly successful) assistant coaching career. He was an assistant for the Bulls from 2001 to 2010, developing Bulls legends such as Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, Joakim Noah, and Derrick Rose. He then joined Mark Jackson’s Warriors staff and spent three years helping set the foundation for the generational run those Golden State teams had. In 2015 he returned to the Bulls, before ultimately concluding his time in Chicago in 2019.
3. Craig Hodges
Local readers know that Chicago State University has never been a bastion of athletic success. So I decided not to hold Hodges’ 8-51 record in the NCAA ranks against him. As bad as those results were, Phil Jackson still hired his former 3-point specialist to join the Lakers staff in 2005. Hodges spent six years in LA as the main shooting coach for the team, and was rewarded with championship rings in 2009 and 2010. He then went on to coach in the Knicks organization, mostly with the Westchester Knicks where he had a brief stint as the interim head coach.
2. Jerry Sloan
Ranking number one and number two was nearly an impossible task. The Bulls have had two of the greatest coaches in NBA history both play in Chicago. But ultimately, despite his lengthy success, Jerry Sloan can only be runner-up.
He played for the Bulls from 1966 to 1976, and then a few years later he was hired as coach of the Bulls. His record from 1979 to 1982 was 94-121, and he led the team to the playoffs once. Half a decade later he was hired by the Utah Jazz, and that’s where the legendary career really began.
He was the Utah head coach for 23 seasons. He finished his coaching career at 1,221-803, and 1,127 of those were with the Jazz. He had the fourth-most wins as a coach in NBA history at the time of his death in 2020. The Jazz made the playoffs 15 straight years under his leadership, and he led them to two finals appearances (where they were defeated by the Bulls each time).
1. Steve Kerr
I feel like it’s barely even necessary to defend Kerr being at the top of this list. He was hired by the Warriors in 2014, and he instantly led Golden State to their first NBA title in 40 years. Three more championships followed in 2017, 2018, and 2022. The team went to five straight NBA Finals. He was named Coach of the Year in 2016.
Through last season, he has a record of 604-353 in the regular season, and a truly remarkable 104-48 in the playoffs. Between his playing days and his coaching career, Kerr has won nine championship rings. That’s a level of success that few men have ever reached in this league.
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