Bulls owner doesn't know ball, but that could be OK

Michael Reinsdorf isn't running Bulls basketball, but he needs to hire someone who can

Michael Reinsdorf, whose business qualifications begin and end with his parentage, had what I think was his first-ever open press availability since assuming (we’re assuming) control over his dad’s basketball franchise. He addressed the fans with a statement and took questions from media (and PR) in the wake of the long-overdue firing of his first real-boy hire, Arturas Karnisovas.

Man…a couple days later, and it still feels great to type that! This was a universally-lauded decision to finally shitcan these bozos, and here are some of my favorite postmortems:

• Stephen Noh

• Kelly Dwyer

• Tom Ziller

• John Hollinger

The expected damage control from the disposed executives came via Jamal Collier of ESPN, who had sourced¹ some AKME whining about the ‘constraints’ they were under from ownership, namely the franchise’s motivations - and that aligning with head coach Billy Donovan - of not wanting to tank for better chances in the draft lottery.

That’s clearly a bullshit excuse coming from incompetents who were also voluminous bullshitters. But it does bring up the important point of ownership’s role.

And I am not fatalistic with that. As Dwyer put it:

Here's the part where I'm supposed to tell you this will never end, because Reinsdorf(s).

Chicago's problem is the owner, the owner's son, but that's the same problem with most NBA teams. Franchises can develop championships even under the meddlesome, which-team-did-you-scout-for, annoyance of an owner's grown-up kid.

I, of course, had low expectations for lil’ ‘dorf’s appearance: as the son of a billionaire, it was very likely going to get a bit weird.

And it did get weird, but only a bit! Most egregious was the part where he denied that AKME received contract extensions last summer even though it was confirmed by their in-house ‘reporter’ and double-confirmed after they scrubbed it from their team-owned sites. There was also some concerning opinions on the value of lost regular seasons like this one, with both player development² and arena patrons’ placation seen as important factors.

That’s not great, but my important takeaway is that while Michael Reinsdorf himself may seem in over his head and not a compelling leader³, that is fine as long as he knows to look for those qualities in his lead basketball hire.

In 2020 he was in this same position and hired a total dud. But I was encouraged by a few quotes that there were some lessons learned:

1. Using a search firm this time

2. No in-person restrictions from Covid like in 2020

3. Acknowledged an important quality is communication, both internally and externally to the fanbase, and he admitted that Arturas Karnisovas was awful at that

4. Acknowledged that he needs to be less hands-off when something seems blatantly wrong

But since this is a Reinsdorf, and these are The Bulls, there were some troubling indications that they’d repeat past mistakes.

1. John Paxson is still hanging around and Reinsdorf cited him as an influence (gag), and also still around is Gar Forman’s former bag man Brian Hagen. Holdovers from the AKME regime include the lesser Connelly brother and JJ Polk

2. The deference to the incumbent head coach, Billy Donovan

The biggest winner in this newly-opened power vacuum is Donovan, who Reinsdorf lauded repeatedly and deferred any future decisions to his employment to Donovan himself. Not only did Michael expect to see Donovan exert more influence on personnel decisions, but said he’d see it as a character flaw in any front office candidate if they didn’t want Donovan to coach.

This is not a best practice. Ideally, the organization would be an entirely clean slate, and you can get a bigger name in the conversation of potential hires by trusting them to decide if Donovan should remain coach.

But, again grading on an NBA Owner curve, this is better than when the team told a newly-hired Karnisovas that he had to ‘evaluate’ Jim Boylen for months⁴ . Donovan is a good coach, a capable talent evaluator, is genuinely well-respected throughout the league, and perhaps most importantly the Reinsdorf family will listen to him.

While Donovan clearly exhibits a win-now mentality that befits coaches more than executives, I don’t believe he is ignorant of long-term planning towards building a sustainable winner. I can very easily see a scenario where Donovan helps find an executive, and that executive says they need to go young (and therefore bad) for a couple seasons, and Donovan agrees that makes sense but doesn’t want to be coach then.

I don’t worry so much about Donovan (or Paxson) steering the Bulls incorrectly as much as I worry about self-imposed financial constraints. Throughout the few-and-long-tenured front office administrations, one constant has been the lack of prior experience and support staff, two things that cost money (with no spending cap). Donovan is already a well-paid coach, and despite lil’ ‘dorf’s lies they are paying the fired executives on their way out.

I’ve seen rumors of candidates but nothing seems that concrete yet. There are three ways this can go, in order of my preference:

1. They hire an established big-name executive, who will entertain retaining Donovan to where all parties are satisfied, but ultimately be able to get what he wants (whether that’s keeping Donovan as head coach or not)

2. They keep Donovan as coach, and hire a relatively novice executive with Donovan as a shadow president

3. Donovan ascends to the front office - reportedly not what he wants to do, now - and picks a GM under him and a cheap first-timer coach

4. Donovan quits, Bulls hire another cheap first-timer executive who gets a cheap first-timer coach

Again, it’d be great if Michael Reinsdorf was, for lack of a better phrase, “his own man”, and had the humility/wisdom to know he doesn’t know, and therefore best this time to give up executive power to a proven success instead of giving it to Billy Donovan.

But he’s Jerry Reindsorf’s son, and Jerry is ::checks:: still alive. So we’re stuck with him, not a unique situation in sports fandom.

I don’t believe Arturas Karnisovas was destined to fail because of ownership constraints. But maybe he was destined to fail because Michael Reinsdorf’s process to hire him. Hopefully that process changes this time around.

1. definitely not Marc Eversley himself, couldn’t be!

2. Bulls won in Washington on Tuesday night, and Patrick Williams scored more than 3 baskets. Is that meaningful at all? no!

3. this is technically a vast improvement over when he was admitting to reporters that Jim Boylen rizzed him

4. the first sign I saw that this was not going to go well. I have obtained TOTAL VINDICATION in calling for AK’s head months into the job.