Fire Billy Donovan. And then Make him GM.
Billy may be a fine coach stuck in a bad situation, here's a way to fix both problems
The Bulls continued their ‘no integrity tour’ in San Francisco on Thursday night, as they had a big rest and injury advantage over the home Warriors but wound up getting pummeled in the 2nd half. The Bulls have now lost 7 of their last 9 games and that was against many opponents at or near their level (bad if not terrible).
This game had a noteworthy factor in that it involved significant garbage time, over 5 and a half minutes, which highlighted the difference in the ‘young players with experience’ on both rosters. While the Warriors are the older team, they received significant contributions (all played 10 minutes or more, even after excluding garbage time) from many relatively-young players, who were acquired from further on the margins than their Bulls analogues:
Quinten Post - 52nd pick
Gui Santos - 57th pick
Moses Moody - 14th pick
Brandin Podziemski - 19th pick
Trayce Jackson-Davis - 57th pick
Post (on a 2-way contract), in particular, was ironic to see as with 18 points on 5/10 from three he easily bested Nikola Vucevic, who is a rumored trade target. Not that I think one game suffices as an audition, but if it did the Warriors would come away not wanting Vuc to block minutes.
That brings me to the Bulls young players and how Billy Donovan is allocating their minutes in a game like this. Matas Buzelis and Dalen Terry played just over 5 minutes apiece, and Julian Phillips had 8 and a half. If looking purely at age, the Bulls weighted minutes still made them the significantly younger team. Post, though a rookie, is older than Patrick Williams. Santos is a few months older than Josh Giddey.
But comparing the rosters with a more imprecise “young bench contributors”, Steve Kerr’s deployments greatly exceeded those of Donovan. You could make a case that the games the Warriors young-ish guys had Thursday night was better than any night Bulls’ guys have had in their entire careers.
We have followed all season this dynamic that the Bulls, while talking about the desire to develop young players, are not practicing this even as they languish in the bottom ten of the league and their few wins are driven by veterans they want (somewhat want) to trade.
Is this just an impossible situation for a head coach to be put in? Or is some of this Donovan’s fault too?
Donovan, at every turn, has shown a disinterest in ‘gifting’ NBA minutes to aid player development. It’s why he left the Thunder to coach the Bulls in the first place (whoops), and has been his conveyed attitude through this season, especially when discussing Buzelis and the fact that he can’t bench one of the worst players in the league.
That overall philosophy of being veteran-friendly (and for similar reasons, guard-friendly: they’re like coaches on the floor!) is incongruent with what should be the direction of the franchise. The Bulls could use a less-entrenched head coach to go with their younger roster.
A dismissal on those grounds may not be Donovan’s fault. So in the interest of fairness, and saving the Bulls money, I propose kicking Billy upstairs and fire Arturas Karnisovas.
Would Donovan be a good GM1? One qualification lacking is that he seems laser-focused on what wins the game in front of him, but that may be his current role and doesn’t mean he can’t be adaptable.
At the end of Thursday’s game, Stacey King was throwing not-very-subtle criticism of Donovan not playing younger players. But he was incorrect (not new for Stacey…) in the diagnosis of the problem. King extolled the virtues of the bench-buried, like they have proven to be good and they just lacked routine and confidence.
No, the problem is that all these young guys stink! And Billy knows it, and though it’s not his primary job, he has been evaluating these players all season.
He benches Josh Giddey to end games. He cuts Patrick Williams’s minutes and calls out a lack of activity/force2. He pushed Dalen Terry down in the rotation mentioning Terry’s undisciplined play on both ends. He implies that Julian Phillips lack of skill is causing a logjam for his playing time with other bigs (shouldn’t Phillips be a 3?).
(Buzelis is a unique case, as while he also stinks: it’s expected, and he has the most upside. A lot of the stinkage comes from stuff that can be quickly improved with NBA minutes. Maybe Billy the GM would tell his new coach - his son? - to give the gift of playing time.)
The remarkable thing about Donovan saying all this about the roster is that even though he’s limited in motivation to do so (versus a motivation to win games), it’s still far far far more than AKME says about them. A tertiary benefit to this organizational shakeup is that the Bulls would have a point person who can actually convey a vision (albeit in a manner a bit too loquacious for my taste) and has confidence in his knowledge of the game. The main benefit would be getting someone in the role who has proven to possesses knowledge of the game.
‘is our current GM any good and worth keeping?’ has been answered long ago
I am curious why he - or anyone - doesn’t say Williams’ isn’t right physically. Maybe he is - which is really really bad news for his career trajectory.
BD has lost the team and with his roster style has never really had a grasp on using it anyway. The PW he's pulling back from now has mostly been the starter the last four years! He's be a terrible GM too, though a nice youth coach and a welcome guest for dinner. A lot of his sticking around has been to get his son hist first job, admirable parenting but also full company man vibes. Baby Reinsdorf doesn't have balls to hire an psycho aggressive GM like Danny Ainge or a tough, sociopath (but winning) coach like Mr. Udoka down in Houston. The stink and pitifulness on this org runs top to bottom, I'm very sad to say.
Bulls got a dead-cat-bounce win over the full-strength Nuggets at home. Bulls hit a shitton of threes (including rare LaVine clutch makes) and the Nuggets missed a ton (shot a lot less too) and messed around too much around the rim and not converting fast breaks.
So not that it means much (nothing does this season!), but it was interesting to see Billy doing a rotation change. Pat out for the 4-guard lineup, and Buzelis first off the bench. Both played decently, obviously this doesn't 'unlock' Pat because what's locked is his ability to move.
Anyway, it may not last because LaVine is out for a couple games for paternity leave and Coby may or may not be back himself. And then the trade deadline. So we won't really know how Billy would treat the full strength Bulls (unless they do no trades again, possible!), except hold on too long to this point.