Billy Donovan quit on the Bulls (for good reason)

with new exec search underway, the old administration is clearing out

Breaking news on Tuesday morning - and that’s fairly surprising as usually the Bulls try a Friday afternoon dumpage of such things - as Billy Donovan has quit as Bulls Head Coach.

This is a move that has been weeks in the making, and even the jettisoning of the failed front office plus full-throated backing of Donovan by ownership in the aftermath wasn’t enough to have Donovan stay.

It was reported by Joe Cowley of the Sun-Times that Donovan met with the ‘dorf family last Tuesday, and instead of the ‘quick decision’ that both sides claimed was surely happening it lingered for several days. Certainly any delay only gave further fuel to the idea that Donovan was leaving. Maybe the days spent since have been logistics, we don’t know how much of his contract is being paid out and the fate of his staff (including his son).

The ultimate decision to stay or go was appearing obvious. Though the ‘dorfs were backing Billy to the point of suggesting the new lead executive search criteria would include ‘liking Billy Donovan’, it was clear that while objectively Billy is a good coach he is not the right coach at this time for the franchise.

No matter who they hire - and there was a candidate list leaked and search firm established and reported on over the weekend - the Bulls are staring at a huge talent deficit. While they have FLEXIBILITY instead of good players, there was no quick fix conceivable to where Donovan knew that, regardless of ownership’s possible AKME-level delusion. Perhaps after an alternative path last trade deadline where Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu are still in the fold and potentially re-signed, there are enough good players to where it would perhaps take a big ballsy/desperate trade (Zion?) to get the organization in alignment with Donovan: where winning the game in front of you is top priority.

But instead they are nowhere near Donovan’s desired competitiveness level. And as we saw many times over his tenure, Donovan was not going to take it upon himself - nor should he have been expected to - to steer organizational direction.

The team on the floor next year is looking to be very young - the Blazers pick conveyed so the Bulls now have #15, #38¹ and their top-10 lottery pick plus Noa Essengue from last year’s draft - and thus very bad. While Reinsdorf explicitly conveyed the organization’s distrust towards tanking, this strategy is more ethical losing. With multiple major injury returnees coming to the Bulls’ quartile of the conference next year, even a lotto win and poaching in restricted free agency wasn’t going to be enough to make the playoffs.

It’s very likely the next Bulls coach will be worse than Donovan. But in this scenario - and it’s so blatantly a rebuild that I would consider it a major red flag in any exec candidate who didn’t see it that way - that’s fine. He’ll probably be similar to several caretaker (caretanker?) bozos like Will Hardy of the Jazz or Brian Keefe of the Wizards. Now those are guys who were doing more purposefully-losing in-game tactics, but that isn’t required to do this Bulls coaching job well. Heck, we don’t even know how much losing will impact the draft slot next year.

Donovan had some developmental successes while Bulls coach, but he had a philosophy - shared, or maybe simply deferred to, by AKME - of not giving out entitlement minutes. The next Bulls coach will do what Donovan didn’t, and play the young guys without constraint.

We don’t know who the Bulls will hire as a lead executive, but it’s likely going to be a cheap first-timer. They’ll probably get the same caliber of a coach, possibly technically-second-timer Wes Unseld Jr., as he’s already under contract. Donovan’s hiring was necessary at the time because the Bulls went so-insanely-unqualified in their hire of his predecessor Jim Boylen that projecting any ‘stature’ was a huge step up. And Donovan certainly gave the Bulls that, going above and beyond to be a shield from media/fans for AKME and simultaneously indulging one of his own favorite pastimes: talking.

He also was a pretty good coach. Just pretty good, not great, and we’ll never know if his teams would be at a tactical disadvantage in a playoffs series because he so rarely got the team there. Given that it’ll be likely several years before they need that question answered, bring on the empty suit athletic wear to Bulls sidelines next year.

1. #56 overall is unlikely to bring in an active roster player let alone someone in the rotation