Billy Donovan gets contract extension

[dougthonus]

It's perfectly fine if you believe Billy is better than the current FA coaches, that's reasonable. I just draw issue with the argument that an average coach is the same as an elite coach.

Fair enough, I don't want to keep beating the same dead horses. I don't think our views are all that different. I probably think Billy is better than you do, and also value coaches less than you, but even those gaps probably aren't super huge.

That somehow Billy is the same as Carlisle or Spo or Pop and it's negligible when the entire league, players, FOs, and fanbase would immediately jettison Billy or Malone or Jenkins or Nurse for a Spo/Pop level coach.

FWIW, Spo and Carlisle are my two picks as best coaches in the NBA right now, and I'd jettison Billy for either. Pop was obviously elite back in the day, but I'd say is likely considerably diminished at this point. Malone, Jenkins, and Nurse are all guys that were viewed as very good coaches, and I'd put Billy on their tier.

If we had one of those guys, and our players bought into them, played hard, and management was on the same page with them, I wouldn't look to move on from any of those guys either.

[sco]

It's perfectly fine if you believe Billy is better than the current FA coaches, that's reasonable. I just draw issue with the argument that an average coach is the same as an elite coach.

Fair enough, I don't want to keep beating the same dead horses. I don't think our views are all that different. I probably think Billy is better than you do, and also value coaches less than you, but even those gaps probably aren't super huge.

That somehow Billy is the same as Carlisle or Spo or Pop and it's negligible when the entire league, players, FOs, and fanbase would immediately jettison Billy or Malone or Jenkins or Nurse for a Spo/Pop level coach.

FWIW, Spo and Carlisle are my two picks as best coaches in the NBA right now, and I'd jettison Billy for either. Pop was obviously elite back in the day, but I'd say is likely considerably diminished at this point. Malone, Jenkins, and Nurse are all guys that were viewed as very good coaches, and I'd put Billy on their tier.

If we had one of those guys, and our players bought into them, played hard, and management was on the same page with them, I wouldn't look to move on from any of those guys either.

I think that ability to work with our FO is an underdiscussed skill of Billy's. We've all worked for bosses who weren't very good at their jobs and are very insecure. For Billy to keep wanting to show up and work here and get our players to buy-in during this period of mediocrity...it's a gift. NFW is AK going to be able to convince one of those other good coaches to work here (much less put up with all of his BS).

[Lunartic]

It's perfectly fine if you believe Billy is better than the current FA coaches, that's reasonable. I just draw issue with the argument that an average coach is the same as an elite coach.

Fair enough, I don't want to keep beating the same dead horses. I don't think our views are all that different. I probably think Billy is better than you do, and also value coaches less than you, but even those gaps probably aren't super huge.

That somehow Billy is the same as Carlisle or Spo or Pop and it's negligible when the entire league, players, FOs, and fanbase would immediately jettison Billy or Malone or Jenkins or Nurse for a Spo/Pop level coach.

FWIW, Spo and Carlisle are my two picks as best coaches in the NBA right now, and I'd jettison Billy for either. Pop was obviously elite back in the day, but I'd say is likely considerably diminished at this point. Malone, Jenkins, and Nurse are all guys that were viewed as very good coaches, and I'd put Billy on their tier.

If we had one of those guys, and our players bought into them, played hard, and management was on the same page with them, I wouldn't look to move on from any of those guys either.

Agreed

And def agree that Spo and Carlisle are the top coaches in the NBA

[Stratmaster]

Nick Nurse (1x champ, 1x coach of the year, 1x all star coach) has gone .500 or worse in 3 of his 7 years as a head coach. Including 24-56 record last year with an injured 76ers team.

Mike Budenholzer (2x coach COTY & 7x COTM) went from 58 wins in 2023 with Milwaukee to 36 wins last year in Phoenix.

Quin Snyder (5 top 10 NBA COTY finishes & 4x COTM) currently has a .465 win percentage with Atlanta.

Pop's record the last 7 seasons in San Antonio: 240-318

Did Pop just get worse at coaching? Or, did they just not have the talent to do much? You can be the greatest coach there is and still have bad teams in the NBA. It's a player's league. That's why it's very possible to be a bad team that's actually coached very well.

The best record does not mean the best coached teams.

I don't think anyone on here has said that a head coach can take a bad team and make it good. That in no way leads to a conclusion that coaches don't impact winning.

[Stratmaster]

You cannot have it both ways.

A coach can be bad and impact winning but you also say coaching doesn't impact wins and losses.

If a bad coach can impact winning - a good coach can impact winning and a great coach can impact winning.

I'm not giving you conflicting opinions though. I told you that outside of maybe a few historical anomalies, an NBA HC is not impactful in wins and losses, at least not in a meaningful way.

However, if you choose to believe that a coach impacts wins and losses, then arguing that Donovan should be fired on the merit of it is illogical when his teams have overachieved what the talent on the roster suggests they should accomplish.

Let's take your three criteria

Coach A

Meets all 3
-Designs a motion offense that allows star players and roleplayers to maximize their talents
-wins 50 games

Coach B
-Meets all 3
-doesn't maximize talent
-wins 45 games

As a FO, who would you rather hire for the same money?

I'm not suggesting coaches don't need to meet your criteria, I'm saying your criteria should probably include something about their actual ability to help win games. And yes, a poorly timed timeout or refusing to challenge in the last minute of a game can lose you a game and that's on the coach. It does happen and it happens more frequently to bad/lesser coaches.

I just don't see this is as a credible or relevant exercise if you're arguing that a HC upgrade by itself is worth 5 wins. If coaches in the NBA were worth a +5 improvement, teams would be trading 1st round picks for them with no hesitation.

Coaches are a part of the equation of having a well-run franchise, but they are not an impactful component of winning games or championships, especially not to the degree you're stating where a difference in Xs and Os adds 5 wins to a team by itself.

In what way have the Bulls overachieved?

Going from a team that was 10 games over .500 to a team that is consistently under .500 for multiple seasons? Under .500 for 4 of the 5 seasons he has coached here in one of the largest sports markets in the world?

Has the team achieved the stated goal of making the playoffs each season?

Name a single achievement of the Bulls during Donovan's tenure? Winning one playoff game and one play-in game in 5 seasons? Did this somehow overachieve what was expected of the team?

[Hangtime84]

I'm surprised by this pro Billy Donovan comments here from one the chicago bulls biggest hater reporters.

https://youtu.be/iEm1E-YsNHo?si=JT8v2JO7zF6noSIj

[kodo]

The entire "most coaches don't impact winning" isn't really about coaching not mattering, it's really because almost all NBA coaches are in fact elite at their job so it's incredibly rare to get a complete failure as HC. Random vet coaches like Mike Brown and Budenholzer are actually at an elite level compared to the average person, even the lower of the 30 teams in the league have elite coaches both on their benches. So it's hard to stand out like Spo or Carlisle do. And I'm not sure if Spo actually did a lot this year in terms of added Ws.

People ridicule coaches like Mike Brown and Bud as if they were actually bad at coaching and fans could do better, which is like when those random ballers full of themselves tried to play a retired, out of shape Salabrine 1 on 1 and he absolutely murdered them. He had such a great quote, "I am closer to Lebron than you are to me" and it applies to coaching as well.

At least in terms of plays & actions, but we've seen coaches just implode in the player ego management area which is always going to be case by case. Butler was fine in Miami for years and then he wasn't. Nothing really changed about the Miami org.

[Indomitable]

Butler was fine in Miami for years and then he wasn't. Nothing really changed about the Miami org.

Are you serious?

They started the seasoning telling Jimmy to shut up.

Miami changed Jimmy role and basically told him he was not in the plans. That is what changed. It was not out of no where.

[dougthonus]

Butler was fine in Miami for years and then he wasn't. Nothing really changed about the Miami org.

Are you serious?

They started the seasoning telling Jimmy to shut up.

Miami changed Jimmy role and basically told him he was not in the plans. That is what changed. It was not out of no where.

Ultimately, what really changed is Miami no longer believed in Butler as a superstar going forward. They put up with a lot of crap (reportedly) for a long time that they didn't like because they believed in the results. They stopped believing they'd get those results going forward and so stopped putting up with the crap.

Almost certainly the correct decision for Miami (vs committing massive dollars to him and continuing to allow him diva treatment) and probably also worked out better for Jimmy (in his waning years at least GS will have a punchers chance and has the same short term goals/mindset).

[kodo]

Butler was fine in Miami for years and then he wasn't. Nothing really changed about the Miami org.

Are you serious?

They started the seasoning telling Jimmy to shut up.

Miami changed Jimmy role and basically told him he was not in the plans. That is what changed. It was not out of no where.

He role changed because he got worse. He wanted to be paid like a 1st option on a playoff team salary ($55M) while averaging 17 ppg on a play-in team. They said no which was completely reasonable.

[Indomitable]

Butler was fine in Miami for years and then he wasn't. Nothing really changed about the Miami org.

Are you serious?

They started the seasoning telling Jimmy to shut up.

Miami changed Jimmy role and basically told him he was not in the plans. That is what changed. It was not out of no where.

He role changed because he got worse. He wanted to be paid like a 1st option on a playoff team salary ($55M) while averaging 17 ppg on a play-in team. They said no which was completely reasonable.

Then why are posting like there was no cause and effect.

[kodo]

The NBA reddit is having a parallel discussion on Billy, I thought the data here was really interesting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1mqaarx/the_top_coaches_in_the_nba_according_to_long_term/

This is a long term regression based on how well players play with a certain coach, versus without.
For example, if Russell Westbrook plays really well under Billy Donovan, but plays poorly under a different coach at a similar age, then this stat would credit Billy Donovan. Then basically combine that across all players throughout a coach's career. And it seems to do basic adjustments for things like player age.
There's a lot of variables here, it's not perfect, but in theory with a large enough sample size it could at least pick up on something.
And certain things seem somewhat accurate - for example Kenny Atkinson being the #1 offensive coach, and Tom Thibodeau being the #1 defensive coach.
It's obviously not definitive rankings, but a fun stat to look at.

Billy was the 2nd best active coach according to this data set.

Code: Select all

Coach   Net
Udoka   +2.4
Donov   +2.4
Atkin   +2.1
Thibo   +2.0
Daign   +1.6
River   +1.4
Mosle   +1.1
Popov   +0.7
Buden   +0.7
Spoel   +0.7
Kerr    +0.7
Torre   +0.7
Chris   +0.6
Finch   +0.5
Isalo   +0.3
Adelm   +0.3
Snyde   +0.1
Carli   +0.1
Lee     +0.1
Redic   +0.0
Bicke   +0.0
Lue     -0.2
Green   -0.4
Hardy   -0.6
Kidd    -0.6
Nurse   -0.9
Mazul   -1.0
Keefe   -1.3
Rajak   -1.4
Billu   -2.4


The historical set of coaches includes 2 Bulls coaches in the top 3.
1. Mike Fratello +3.5
2. Scott Skiles +3.5
3. Phil Jackson +3.1

[samwana]

Interesting, that would be really good for individual sports. I guess DDR was also best under BD, because he could do whatever he wanted. It didn't make the team better. Now we will see what happens in the next years, BD needs an ingame XandO's assistant that runs the plays throughout the games, because he is not that guy. I still want Rondo for that job.

[coldfish]

The entire "most coaches don't impact winning" isn't really about coaching not mattering, it's really because almost all NBA coaches are in fact elite at their job so it's incredibly rare to get a complete failure as HC. Random vet coaches like Mike Brown and Budenholzer are actually at an elite level compared to the average person, even the lower of the 30 teams in the league have elite coaches both on their benches. So it's hard to stand out like Spo or Carlisle do. And I'm not sure if Spo actually did a lot this year in terms of added Ws.

People ridicule coaches like Mike Brown and Bud as if they were actually bad at coaching and fans could do better, which is like when those random ballers full of themselves tried to play a retired, out of shape Salabrine 1 on 1 and he absolutely murdered them. He had such a great quote, "I am closer to Lebron than you are to me" and it applies to coaching as well.

At least in terms of plays & actions, but we've seen coaches just implode in the player ego management area which is always going to be case by case. Butler was fine in Miami for years and then he wasn't. Nothing really changed about the Miami org.

IMO, its pet cat syndrome. Fans fall in love with players and decide that their guy isn't doing as well as he should because of the coach.

Winning in the NBA is mostly about talent and over the last few years, the Bulls simply haven't been particularly talented. Especially when you consider all the injuries. As is being shown above, Donovan is likely squeezing most of what he can out of this roster.

I can make my complaints about him and back it up with stats. Thibodeau, for example, usually wins the 4th quarter statistically and its a testament to his in game adjustments. Donovan isn't a great in game tactics guy. That said, my complaints are mostly quibbles and I'm fully aware most people couldn't deal with all of the data coming at you in a game.

[2weekswithpay]

I commented on Billy being 2nd in coach RAPM on another post. Still not sure what to make of this stat, but this was an interesting comment from the reddit post.

So does it just give Donovan a ton of credit because Westbrook was all-NBA tier on the Thunder and then fell off a cliff right after?

It's probably a combination of a ton of data:

Enes Kanter magically becoming playable in OKC, and otherwise being like the worst player in the NBA
Serge Ibaka falling off a cliff after leaving OKC
Schroder being a 6th man in OKC, then pretty bad after
Zach Lavine turning into All-NBA under Donovan
Gallo having a random great season under Donovan
Lonzo immediately having a really good season under Donovan, after being a little up-and-down in NOLA
Paul George becoming a #3 MVP candidate

Enes Kanter certainly had the best offensive stretch of his career under Donovan. Kanter's 3y RAPM in his last season in OKC (2017) was -0.7, with a career high 2.8 offensive RAPM. DARKO (DPM) also agrees that 2016-17 was Kanter's peak offensively.

Ibaka only played a single season under Donovan. Ibaka's 3y RAPM in 2016 was 3.5, the highest of his career however, that includes two seasons under Scott Brooks. Looking at DPM for the 2016 season, Ibaka had the best DPM of his career in the single season he played under Donovan. Ibaka's DPM drops from 3.2 in 2016 to 0.9 in 2017.

Schroder's last season in OKC (2020) was also his highest 3y RAPM. Schroder's decline is overstated in the comment. He's always been a solid guard, but never good enough to make it as a full time starter. His RAPM drop off isn't that much, 1.2 RAPM in 2020 and 0.6 RAPM in 2025. DPM thinks Schroders' best season was in 2016 over 2020, but the difference is minor.

Zach's prime years were with the Bulls, so instead I'll look at Zach's single season DPM under Boylen compared to under Donovan. Zach had a DPM of 0.4 in 2020 and 1.8 in 2021. While most of the roster remained the same over these two seasons, I can't say how much of Zach's improvement is better utilization vs player progression.

Gallo was a good player, so I wouldn't call it a random good season. He was effective the year prior under Doc Rivers. DPM thinks he had a better season under Donovan than Rivers, and Gallo declines significantly after leaving OKC.

Lonzo had his best season under Donovan, but given his short career at the time, I wouldn't think much of it.

PG has his best 3y RAPM and DPM in 2021 on the Clippers. Injuries and expectations probably cloud how effective PG was on the Clippers. Statistically, his best season was under Donovan, and other metrics might think his best season was in 2019.

Not a perfect way of doing things, but notable players do seem to have their best stretches under Donovan.

[2weekswithpay]

The creator of DARKO releases his model's win projections before each season. Vegas' win projections seem to be controversial, so I'm using another one.

Read on Twitter

2021-22: projected wins 44.1 actual wins 46 (Doc)

2022-23: projected wins 38.1 actual wins 40 (Doc)

2023-34: projected wins 38.6 actual wins 39 (Doc)

2024-25: projected win 34.5 actual wins 39 (Doc)

The Bulls have outperformed DARKO's projected win total in each of the last 4 seasons.

[kodo]

Jim Boylen promotion.

The Pacers are making changes on Rick Carlisle ’s bench. The team announced Monday that Johnny Carpenter has joined the staff as an assistant, while veteran coach Jim Boylen will move to the front of the bench alongside Lloyd Pierce and Jenny Boucek.

As for Boylen, his promotion fills the vacancy left after Mike Weinar and the team mutually agreed to part ways. The former Bulls head coach now joins Pierce and Boucek as Carlisle’s top lieutenants heading into the season.

Boylen's resume now has him as a top assistant for two Finals teams, the Spurs & Indiana. Coaches are about matches & fit & relationships.

[Red Larrivee]

Jim Boylen promotion.

The Pacers are making changes on Rick Carlisle ’s bench. The team announced Monday that Johnny Carpenter has joined the staff as an assistant, while veteran coach Jim Boylen will move to the front of the bench alongside Lloyd Pierce and Jenny Boucek.

As for Boylen, his promotion fills the vacancy left after Mike Weinar and the team mutually agreed to part ways. The former Bulls head coach now joins Pierce and Boucek as Carlisle’s top lieutenants heading into the season.

Boylen's resume now has him as a top assistant for two Finals teams, the Spurs & Indiana. Coaches are about matches & fit & relationships.

Also was an assistant on the B2B Houston title teams.

Boylen was disastrous as a HC in college and in the NBA. He may just be a really good career assistant. But you're right. Fit and relationships are very important either way.

[dougthonus]

The NBA reddit is having a parallel discussion on Billy, I thought the data here was really interesting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1mqaarx/the_top_coaches_in_the_nba_according_to_long_term/

This is a long term regression based on how well players play with a certain coach, versus without.
For example, if Russell Westbrook plays really well under Billy Donovan, but plays poorly under a different coach at a similar age, then this stat would credit Billy Donovan. Then basically combine that across all players throughout a coach's career. And it seems to do basic adjustments for things like player age.
There's a lot of variables here, it's not perfect, but in theory with a large enough sample size it could at least pick up on something.
And certain things seem somewhat accurate - for example Kenny Atkinson being the #1 offensive coach, and Tom Thibodeau being the #1 defensive coach.
It's obviously not definitive rankings, but a fun stat to look at.

Billy was the 2nd best active coach according to this data set.

Code: Select all

Coach   Net
Udoka   +2.4
Donov   +2.4
Atkin   +2.1
Thibo   +2.0
Daign   +1.6
River   +1.4
Mosle   +1.1
Popov   +0.7
Buden   +0.7
Spoel   +0.7
Kerr    +0.7
Torre   +0.7
Chris   +0.6
Finch   +0.5
Isalo   +0.3
Adelm   +0.3
Snyde   +0.1
Carli   +0.1
Lee     +0.1
Redic   +0.0
Bicke   +0.0
Lue     -0.2
Green   -0.4
Hardy   -0.6
Kidd    -0.6
Nurse   -0.9
Mazul   -1.0
Keefe   -1.3
Rajak   -1.4
Billu   -2.4


The historical set of coaches includes 2 Bulls coaches in the top 3.
1. Mike Fratello +3.5
2. Scott Skiles +3.5
3. Phil Jackson +3.1

There's a few dataset of this floating around that are a bit different, but by this measure, the Bulls have generally had elite coaches between Jackson, Skiles, Thibs, and Donovan. Four guys in the "all time" quality list, and those guys have coached 24 of our last 35 seasons.

[SalmonsSuperfan]

The NBA reddit is having a parallel discussion on Billy, I thought the data here was really interesting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1mqaarx/the_top_coaches_in_the_nba_according_to_long_term/

This is a long term regression based on how well players play with a certain coach, versus without.
For example, if Russell Westbrook plays really well under Billy Donovan, but plays poorly under a different coach at a similar age, then this stat would credit Billy Donovan. Then basically combine that across all players throughout a coach's career. And it seems to do basic adjustments for things like player age.
There's a lot of variables here, it's not perfect, but in theory with a large enough sample size it could at least pick up on something.
And certain things seem somewhat accurate - for example Kenny Atkinson being the #1 offensive coach, and Tom Thibodeau being the #1 defensive coach.
It's obviously not definitive rankings, but a fun stat to look at.

Billy was the 2nd best active coach according to this data set.

Code: Select all

Coach   Net
Udoka   +2.4
Donov   +2.4
Atkin   +2.1
Thibo   +2.0
Daign   +1.6
River   +1.4
Mosle   +1.1
Popov   +0.7
Buden   +0.7
Spoel   +0.7
Kerr    +0.7
Torre   +0.7
Chris   +0.6
Finch   +0.5
Isalo   +0.3
Adelm   +0.3
Snyde   +0.1
Carli   +0.1
Lee     +0.1
Redic   +0.0
Bicke   +0.0
Lue     -0.2
Green   -0.4
Hardy   -0.6
Kidd    -0.6
Nurse   -0.9
Mazul   -1.0
Keefe   -1.3
Rajak   -1.4
Billu   -2.4


The historical set of coaches includes 2 Bulls coaches in the top 3.
1. Mike Fratello +3.5
2. Scott Skiles +3.5
3. Phil Jackson +3.1

I think this suggests more than anything that 'RAPM' isn't a particularly useful metric. Is Chris Paul the 4th best NBA player ever? Are Manu Ginobli and Draymond Green the 9th and 11th best players? MJ is evidently tied with Draymond according to this metric. Sometimes the 'eye test' is more meaningful than an 'advanced' stat or should at least contextualize it. Motherf**kin' Nene and Franz Wagner are Hall of Famers apparently. NeNe Leakes is a hall of famer, but that's another story...Anyone who watches basketball realizes that MJ was a better basketball player than Dray, that's not really debatable whatever the 'advanced stats' might indicate.
Is the standard error low or high in this case? Are certain individual players throwing things out of wack? There's no way to interpret it just by looking at this blog post created by a non-statistician. Do we even know how 'RAPM' is calculated? How are they assigning the weights? Are they arbitrary? They're pretty arbitrary in the baseball WAR calculation...it also kind of shows you the truth just like PER, BPM or OPS might. But are they more meaningful than just regular ol box score statistics?
Is basketball a system of linear equations? Is non-linearity a consideration at any point in this calculation? Is spatial dependence considered -- spatial relations more generally -- in a sport where 10 guys are moving around at the same time and other non-quantifiable factors (coaching, off-court player development, injuries, bad night's sleep, a particularly mean heckler) are influencing the outcome? I don't know how to answer these questions. Seems pretty "complex" to me, as in linear regression models probably aren't telling you much, even compared to a sport like baseball or football where there isn't a ton of noise. MLB WAR is pretty good, ESPN's TQBR is pretty good even if nobody knows how it's calculated (or whatever the new one is they made up). Doesn't exist for soccer (as far as I know) or basketball, ostensibly because there's a lot more movement going and no clear temporal delineation like there is during a 'down' or a 'pitch'. A basketball 'possession' can change several times in a moment, say two guys fighting for a rebound or a quick turnover, there's a similar logic in soccer. Soccer is probably easier to model if they only did penalty kicks.

The "Wages of Wins" guy, Dave Berri, considered spatial relationships a little bit. His stat "Wins Produced" sometimes shown as "WP/48" (not to be confused with "Win Shares", WS/48) seems like the best individual statistic to me and I don't think anyone has thought about it in like 15 years. As far as I know, it hasn't been updated now that there's actual x,y coordinate data in basketball being tracked. Maybe some teams are doing this stuff in house. He also provided arbitrary weights and it runs into the same problem as PER -- how much is a rebound actually worth? The underlying assumption is that basketball or any sport can be modeled linearly. A lot of things in the real world cannot be. Maybe a linear function can approximate nonlinearity, but I'm not sure any of these sports metrics are doing that.

I dunno about any stats, but Donovan doesn't seem like a very good 'x's and o's' coach. The eye test seems good enough to indicate that. Thibs seemed to actually impact the game to my eye.