KC: Boylen Believes He's Forming Strong Relationship With New Regime

[dougthonus]

Probably a bottom 10 coach? He's easily in the bottom 3 but realistically he's the worst.

And how have you evaluated that?

My personal evaluation is that I've watched a most Bulls games with a hyper critical eye, most Bulls post game interviews with Boylen, read a lot of stuff on a Bulls forum but have relatively little information about most other coaches in the league that you'd consider bad, because of the non-Bulls NBA I watch, it's almost exclusively national games of good teams playing each other and not lousy ones.

I also have no idea what goes on in practice, couldn't name the system most teams are running or have a deep understanding of the principles of the scheme on either side of the ball of what most teams are trying to do to actually know if the coach is implementing something smart and has coached the players to run it. I haven't done any in depth comparison against other teams/systems.

I'm not really equipped to actually make a detailed comparison of Boylen against all the other coaches, and I would guess that I could even only name about half the coaches in the league let alone tell you their strengths and weaknesses. The biggest argument I could make for Boylen that he is bad is the team's record is bad, but that's a fairly baseless comparison without trying to make a comparison of talent levels or taking into account injuries, which I probably couldn't easily compare all 30 teams in the league, as I'm not an expert on all of them.

I can say that Boylen seems like he's on a similar tier to Hoiberg to me and seems on a similar tier to other coaches whom generally haven't lasted in the league. So when I say bottom 10, I think that's pretty reasonable relative to the amount of analysis I've done and what I think good coaching looks like when taking into account roster quality and injuries. At any given time, there are probably around 10 coaches in the league that really just don't have what it takes to be a head coach, and Boylen's probably in that group.

There's really no reason for me to think he's worse than the other guys in that group though given that he has gotten the team to play solid defense and has an offense that is analytically sound and a fairly low level of talent with a lot of injuries to work with, no star players, no two way players, and a relatively thin roster.

I would guess very few people reading this forum have fundamentally done more analysis than the above and have any deeper level of analysis and are more or less in the "Boylen is the worst coach ever" camp because they just don't like him, and if we had one of the other lousy coaches in the league, they would just say he was the worst coach ever.

It doesn't really matter, if we all agree he's not the right guy going forward or head coach material than bottom 10 vs bottom 1 is really irrelevant, but I very much doubt anyone saying he's the worst in the league can make much of a researched case around it.

[chitowndish]

Yeah I really don't like to defend Boylen either but I do think he's a decent coach from an XO's perspective. This team was absolutely clueless under Hoiberg and I did see gradual improvement in the way that Boylen laid out when he started, first they were ran until they had conditioning, then he ran a basic bare bones slow it down offense and basically got them capable in a half court offense they learned how to walk and then he opened it up a bit. The defense yeah it wasn't perfect and they did gamble a lot but the fact that he got a somewhat respectable defense out of this group was pretty remarkable and he worked around the weaknesses of his personnel pretty well I thought.

The guy knows how to coach but I agree he really struggles at some of the in game adjustments, timeouts and his communication can be bad. He can also be really hard headed and keep trying the same strategy or lineup while we are getting crushed. You can tell he has a lot of experience as an assistant coach and I think is pretty good at those types of things and he struggles on the head coach types of things.

[Leslie Forman]

I can't believe I gotta "defend" him, but Boylen's "hard" skills are actually very good IMO. He knows Xs and Os. He is willing to try new tactics, he understands modern basketball trends. The man somehow got Kris Dunn to be a useful player for chrissakes.

But he is absolutely incredibly awful at everything else, which is actually much more important when you're the head coach. It's just more damning evidence how awful MyHusbandPax's emotional intelligence is, that they thought this guy was great head coach material.

That said, he's still better than Hoiberg. Hoiberg lacked both soft skills and hard skills. He was a useless flesh sack. Now that's a guy who was clearly the worst head coach in the league during his time.

DId he? I mean most think 7 million qualifying offer for Dunn is to much.

I said "useful," not "good."

[Jcool0]

I can't believe I gotta "defend" him, but Boylen's "hard" skills are actually very good IMO. He knows Xs and Os. He is willing to try new tactics, he understands modern basketball trends. The man somehow got Kris Dunn to be a useful player for chrissakes.

But he is absolutely incredibly awful at everything else, which is actually much more important when you're the head coach. It's just more damning evidence how awful MyHusbandPax's emotional intelligence is, that they thought this guy was great head coach material.

That said, he's still better than Hoiberg. Hoiberg lacked both soft skills and hard skills. He was a useless flesh sack. Now that's a guy who was clearly the worst head coach in the league during his time.

DId he? I mean most think 7 million qualifying offer for Dunn is to much.

I said "useful," not "good."

He has been "useful" since the Bulls traded for him.

[Jcool0]

Yeah I really don't like to defend Boylen either but I do think he's a decent coach from an XO's perspective. This team was absolutely clueless under Hoiberg and I did see gradual improvement in the way that Boylen laid out when he started, first they were ran until they had conditioning, then he ran a basic bare bones slow it down offense and basically got them capable in a half court offense they learned how to walk and then he opened it up a bit. The defense yeah it wasn't perfect and they did gamble a lot but the fact that he got a somewhat respectable defense out of this group was pretty remarkable and he worked around the weaknesses of his personnel pretty well I thought.

The guy knows how to coach but I agree he really struggles at some of the in game adjustments, timeouts and his communication can be bad. He can also be really hard headed and keep trying the same strategy or lineup while we are getting crushed. You can tell he has a lot of experience as an assistant coach and I think is pretty good at those types of things and he struggles on the head coach types of things.

You do know you just described someone who doesn't know how to coach.

[drosereturn]

Probably a bottom 10 coach? He's easily in the bottom 3 but realistically he's the worst.

And how have you evaluated that?
At any given time, there are probably around 10 coaches in the league that really just don't have what it takes to be a head coach, and Boylen's probably in that group.

There's really no reason for me to think he's worse than the other guys in that group though given that he has gotten the team to play solid defense and has an offense that is analytically sound and a fairly low level of talent with a lot of injuries to work with, no star players, no two way players, and a relatively thin roster.

It doesn't really matter, if we all agree he's not the right guy going forward or head coach material than bottom 10 vs bottom 1 is really irrelevant, but I very much doubt anyone saying he's the worst in the league can make much of a researched case around it.

He is easily bottom 3 bc honestly it is impossible to name 10 worse coaches than him.
When veterans like Young, Sato are having one of their worst careers to date, then its not on the players although im not saying the players are playoff caliber.
My biggest gripe is that he seems to be a good development coach in that he practices every day and hard work, but he doesnt have anything left to teach the players.

[NADROJ]

Players seem to dislike playing for Jim Boylen.

It's a players league.

You're up, new FO.

[MikeDC]

Actually we do know that no other coach in the league did the kind of ridiculous, embarrassing and unprofessional stuff Boylen did on a somewhat regular basis.

The Bulls were a poorly coached offensive team. I and others have laid out the offensive problems in detail. It was bad, and it was bad because it fundamentally misunderstood he basics of basketball.

Defensively, the results were actually pretty similar. The things that, on the surface, people point to as evidence of the Bulls being “improved” defensively were, upon consideration, evidence chasing numbers at the expense of fundamentally sound defense.

In basketball stats, there’s the Four Factors that have been shown, time and again, to be the winning factors. Boylen’s defense very explicitly brought out three of the four. It was an insane strategy that a sensible coach would never employ to the fanatical extreme Boylen did. And the result was bad defense. Statistically in the middle of the road drtg and good steals numbers don’t make a defense good. The ability to get stops does. And the truth is that whenever opponents wanted to score they did. The bulls were 26thin EFG, 26th in rebounding, and 30th in giving up free throws. The Bulls improvement on defense just like on offense, was basically a sham. It was the basketball equivalent of putting new rims and a racing stripe on your piece of **** car.

[chitowndish]

Yeah I really don't like to defend Boylen either but I do think he's a decent coach from an XO's perspective. This team was absolutely clueless under Hoiberg and I did see gradual improvement in the way that Boylen laid out when he started, first they were ran until they had conditioning, then he ran a basic bare bones slow it down offense and basically got them capable in a half court offense they learned how to walk and then he opened it up a bit. The defense yeah it wasn't perfect and they did gamble a lot but the fact that he got a somewhat respectable defense out of this group was pretty remarkable and he worked around the weaknesses of his personnel pretty well I thought.

The guy knows how to coach but I agree he really struggles at some of the in game adjustments, timeouts and his communication can be bad. He can also be really hard headed and keep trying the same strategy or lineup while we are getting crushed. You can tell he has a lot of experience as an assistant coach and I think is pretty good at those types of things and he struggles on the head coach types of things.

You do know you just described someone who doesn't know how to coach.

I'd say more that these things in bold are the difference between a head coach and an assistant coach. They are also primarily general leadership skills that are important skills for any manager to have and aren't really specific to basketball.

[MikeDC]

Worth noting that he seemed to run out his welcome as an assistant pretty quickly after the Initial Rudy Tomjanovich connection. 1 year with the Warriors, 1 with the Bucks, 2 at MSU, 2 in Indiana 2 in San Antonio. Basically, he didn’t stay long anywhere, which might indicate that his times at those places was not entirely successful

[Michael Jackson]

Worth noting that he seemed to run out his welcome as an assistant pretty quickly after the Initial Rudy Tomjanovich connection. 1 year with the Warriors, 1 with the Bucks, 2 at MSU, 2 in Indiana 2 in San Antonio. Basically, he didn’t stay long anywhere, which might indicate that his times at those places was not entirely successful

It’s reported that Boylen would show up in a Kermit Washington jersey and throw fake punches at RTJ during scrimmages. That is where their relationship soured.


That of course is just jokes.

[MikeDC]

Worth noting that he seemed to run out his welcome as an assistant pretty quickly after the Initial Rudy Tomjanovich connection. 1 year with the Warriors, 1 with the Bucks, 2 at MSU, 2 in Indiana 2 in San Antonio. Basically, he didn’t stay long anywhere, which might indicate that his times at those places was not entirely successful

It’s reported that Boylen would show up in a Kermit Washington jersey and throw fake punches at RTJ during scrimmages. That is where their relationship soured.


That of course is just jokes.

Ha ha, I think he was actually with Rudy until the end of the long Houston run. It's just kind of interesting how, after that, he never stuck around anywhere very long. Kind of like one of those teachers or priests or cops who bounces around from place to place every couple years and just never finds the right fit.

[BigUps]

Zero change he stays. He's basically the interim summer coach. I'm not worried at all. No way new leadership keeps the old coach and doesn't bring in one of their guys.

[Alcatraz17]

While I also think we need to move on from Boylen, it would be a great case study if Boylen did return next year, somehow became competent and the bulls started making waves

I wouldn't be all that surprised if that happened, but I wouldn't give much credit for Boylen if it did. I also don't give him nearly as much blame as most people for the last year.

I think he's probably pretty bad based on some things we've seen, but his situation is so lousy that it wouldn't surprise me if people just lumped way too much blame on him for that and that he actually did well with a healthy roster. It's not my expectation, but it wouldn't surprise me at all.

What a fair, sensible post. + 1

[Kurt Heimlich]

Boylen has never struck me as a leader of grown men. Especially not grown men at the peak of their profession. I can see where hed be effective as an assistant who built relationships with players and supported a stronger leaders vision.

Things like his leadership committee and time outs at the end of a 20 point loss are such Mickey mouse, high school coach moves. This isnt coach Carter, this is the NBA dude. He just doesnt have the gravitas to back up these "I'm making a point to my team" moves that frankly look amateurish otherwise.

And thus keeping him as the head of the day to day and game time basketball product will continue to perpetuate the teams well established lack of credibility. Hopefully our cheap ownership doesnt do the predictable thing and cry poor here.

[Alcatraz17]

Probably a bottom 10 coach? He's easily in the bottom 3 but realistically he's the worst.

And how have you evaluated that?

My personal evaluation is that I've watched a most Bulls games with a hyper critical eye, most Bulls post game interviews with Boylen, read a lot of stuff on a Bulls forum but have relatively little information about most other coaches in the league that you'd consider bad, because of the non-Bulls NBA I watch, it's almost exclusively national games of good teams playing each other and not lousy ones.

I also have no idea what goes on in practice, couldn't name the system most teams are running or have a deep understanding of the principles of the scheme on either side of the ball of what most teams are trying to do to actually know if the coach is implementing something smart and has coached the players to run it. I haven't done any in depth comparison against other teams/systems.

I'm not really equipped to actually make a detailed comparison of Boylen against all the other coaches, and I would guess that I could even only name about half the coaches in the league let alone tell you their strengths and weaknesses. The biggest argument I could make for Boylen that he is bad is the team's record is bad, but that's a fairly baseless comparison without trying to make a comparison of talent levels or taking into account injuries, which I probably couldn't easily compare all 30 teams in the league, as I'm not an expert on all of them.

I can say that Boylen seems like he's on a similar tier to Hoiberg to me and seems on a similar tier to other coaches whom generally haven't lasted in the league. So when I say bottom 10, I think that's pretty reasonable relative to the amount of analysis I've done and what I think good coaching looks like when taking into account roster quality and injuries. At any given time, there are probably around 10 coaches in the league that really just don't have what it takes to be a head coach, and Boylen's probably in that group.

There's really no reason for me to think he's worse than the other guys in that group though given that he has gotten the team to play solid defense and has an offense that is analytically sound and a fairly low level of talent with a lot of injuries to work with, no star players, no two way players, and a relatively thin roster.

I would guess very few people reading this forum have fundamentally done more analysis than the above and have any deeper level of analysis and are more or less in the "Boylen is the worst coach ever" camp because they just don't like him, and if we had one of the other lousy coaches in the league, they would just say he was the worst coach ever.

It doesn't really matter, if we all agree he's not the right guy going forward or head coach material than bottom 10 vs bottom 1 is really irrelevant, but I very much doubt anyone saying he's the worst in the league can make much of a researched case around it.

Sensibility strikes again. +1

[Michael Jackson]

Worth noting that he seemed to run out his welcome as an assistant pretty quickly after the Initial Rudy Tomjanovich connection. 1 year with the Warriors, 1 with the Bucks, 2 at MSU, 2 in Indiana 2 in San Antonio. Basically, he didn’t stay long anywhere, which might indicate that his times at those places was not entirely successful

It’s reported that Boylen would show up in a Kermit Washington jersey and throw fake punches at RTJ during scrimmages. That is where their relationship soured.


That of course is just jokes.

Ha ha, I think he was actually with Rudy until the end of the long Houston run. It's just kind of interesting how, after that, he never stuck around anywhere very long. Kind of like one of those teachers or priests or cops who bounces around from place to place every couple years and just never finds the right fit.

Ultimately he is a middling talent. He is reliable and no reason to not have him on a staff but he just isn’t a great coaching talent. He likely though is very professional with the bosses. He is really like the Tony Snell of coaches

[Michael Jackson]

Boylen has never struck me as a leader of grown men. Especially not grown men at the peak of their profession. I can see where hed be effective as an assistant who built relationships with players and supported a stronger leaders vision.

Things like his leadership committee and time outs at the end of a 20 point loss are such Mickey mouse, high school coach moves. This isnt coach Carter, this is the NBA dude. He just doesnt have the gravitas to back up these "I'm making a point to my team" moves that frankly look amateurish otherwise.

And thus keeping him as the head of the day to day and game time basketball product will continue to perpetuate the teams well established lack of credibility. Hopefully our cheap ownership doesnt do the predictable thing and cry poor here.

I genuinely don’t think they will. He doesn’t cost enough (nor does a replacement coach) to actually cry poor about. It’s fun to bash the idea, but realistically with the revamp of the front office they already committed to more money than those changes are together. Paying Fred, Jim and a new head coach (let’s say @ 5 mil) is still going to cost less a year than paying Felicio. A new coach, gets more butts in the seats, as they are really trying for optics here with a new FO. Everyone panics but there has not been any coaches hired, the Knicks have danced a lot but still no hiring, I think everyone is truly waiting for the end of the season to see what musical chairs are going to happen. It makes no sense to act now unless you got a blue chip prospect you really want, apparently no one feels that guy is out there, or The Knicks would have already overpaid him.

[transplant]

There's very little actual support here for Boylen, but I'm surprised at some of the neutrality voiced by posters I respect.

Have you ever heard Boylen come across as bright or insightful? Do you have any evidence that he is respected by his players?

Compare those answers to how many times you have heard him sound like a complete goof and how often you've seen his players openly show that they think he's a goof.

[dougthonus]

There's very little actual support here for Boylen, but I'm surprised at some of the neutrality voiced by posters I respect.

Have you ever heard Boylen come across as bright or insightful? Do you have any evidence that he is respected by his players?

Compare those answers to how many times you have heard him sound like a complete goof and how often you've seen his players openly show that they think he's a goof.

I'm not really neutral on Boylen, as I would like him replaced, but I would say he strikes me as smarter and better than VDN to me. I think most of the stuff I hear him say is fine, not that this is high praise. Also, it's now quite a ways back, but LaVine offered to pay his fine at one point, which is a measure of respect.

The Bulls also think highly of him, they were to boot Cartright nearly immediately, VDN after 2 years, and Hoiberg after 3 and change, so I don't think they're so stuck on wanting to stay with a coach if they think he's not the right guy. I think they actually think Boylen is pretty good.

So it's not a ton of evidence in Boylen's favor, I'll go back to where I started, I would like him replaced, but I don't think the evidence against him is nearly so iron clad as the detractors seem to think it is.