The Knicks don’t appear to be waiting for Jim Boylen’s evaluation to do their own coaching search

I believe there is a genuine feeling among the Bulls fanbase to want to give the new front office hires the benefit of the doubt. That applies to their first significant move: what to do with the head coaching position.

So that’s why, even though the current plan is to have known failure Jim Boylen go through some coaching pantomime gauntlet as a thorough evaluation, we - and moreso from the local media - struggle to come up with explanations for something that is on its face is nonsensical.

One of those rationalizations I’ve seen - though not from anyone significant, to be fair - is that there is no urgency to punt Boylen because the candidates for a head coaching vacancy will be busy with the teams with season remaining. This didn’t really make sense either because this happens all the time - the Bulls were interviewing Thibodeau while he was an assistant with the Celtics - but has been further debunked this week.

That’s because the New York Knicks - another glamour franchise turned shitshow that has new front office hires - are embarking on a search. Maybe they don’t fear the ::checks notes:: blowback from the NBA Coaches Association for, uh, replacing a coach?

From Ian Begley of SNY (via):

The Knicks plan to speak to at least 8-10 coaches during a head-coaching search that will likely stretch into next month...expected to conclude before regular-season games begin in Orlando as part of the restart to the 2019-20 season.

The Knicks began reaching out to potential candidates in recent days, per sources.

Among the potential candidates listed include several high profile assistants that the Bulls should have interest in (especially since they look to be resigning themselves to hiring a first-timer, yet again..), as well as one of their own assistant coaches - Chris Fleming.

Meanwhile, the Bulls have not even started their search, as they’ve not fired Boylen and have ‘empowered’ him to administrate his staff. Still to be determined how this evaluation is going, we do know at the least that Arturas Karnisovas is in the building, which was apparently some firm requirement for performing what should be a pretty simple action.

Cody Westerlund at 670TheScore has a good explainer of what this could mean, depending on timing and who’s leaking what. And it’s all so unnecessarily complicated from the Bulls perspective as opposed to the simple solution:

If you desire the hot candidate, letting another team potentially have the first run at hiring him because you’re not willing to act quickly to fire a coach who’s clearly not your long-term answer is more or less the definition of organizational malpractice.