Congratulations to Billy Donovan

[Lexluthor]

He is going to the basketball hall of fame

[GoBlue72391]

This thread title combined with the body of the post made me laugh. Very straight and to the point. Big "It is your birthday. (Period)" vibes

[DuckIII]

He deserves it. Congratulations.

[dougthonus]

I couldn't find it, but I remember arguing with someone that Donovan was a HOF coach, and I guess that argument has been resolved

Congrats to Billy, I thought it was a no brainer that he'd get in based on how the HOF works. He's pretty obviously a very smart, very good head coach, and when he eventually leaves, the odds are that our new head coach will be far worse.

[League Circles]

I couldn't find it, but I remember arguing with someone that Donovan was a HOF coach, and I guess that argument has been resolved

Congrats to Billy, I thought it was a no brainer that he'd get in based on how the HOF works. He's pretty obviously a very smart, very good head coach, and when he eventually leaves, the odds are that our new head coach will be far worse.

He's grown on me. Not a great coach, but certainly a quality one. Maybe the 2nd highest ceiling coach in Bulls history behind Phil.

[sco]

I couldn't find it, but I remember arguing with someone that Donovan was a HOF coach, and I guess that argument has been resolved

Congrats to Billy, I thought it was a no brainer that he'd get in based on how the HOF works. He's pretty obviously a very smart, very good head coach, and when he eventually leaves, the odds are that our new head coach will be far worse.

He's grown on me. Not a great coach, but certainly a quality one. Maybe the 2nd highest ceiling coach in Bulls history behind Phil.

IMO, he's a decent amount behind Thibs too, probably behind Collins too.

I acknowledge that you need bend-over a little when dealing with stars, but the way he's stuck with Vuc this season has been frustrating.

[Ice Man]

I acknowledge that you need bend-over a little when dealing with stars, but the way he's stuck with Vuc this season has been frustrating.

Hmmm. If you screen through the best +/- 4-man lineups for the Bulls this year, among lineups that have played at least 100 minutes, Vuc is among 7 of the top 8 lineups. It's not clear to me that Billy has hurt the team by playing him, given the alternatives.

[Jcool0]

I couldn't find it, but I remember arguing with someone that Donovan was a HOF coach, and I guess that argument has been resolved

Congrats to Billy, I thought it was a no brainer that he'd get in based on how the HOF works. He's pretty obviously a very smart, very good head coach, and when he eventually leaves, the odds are that our new head coach will be far worse.

He's grown on me. Not a great coach, but certainly a quality one. Maybe the 2nd highest ceiling coach in Bulls history behind Phil.

IMO, he's a decent amount behind Thibs too, probably behind Collins too.

I acknowledge that you need bend-over a little when dealing with stars, but the way he's stuck with Vuc this season has been frustrating.

What exactly did Collins do as Bulls coach? He is most known for going 3-8 vs Detroit in the playoffs and getting fired for Phil Jackson. His biggest claim to fame after Chicago was taking a 35-31 Philly team to the semi finals and only did that because Rose tore his ACL.

[kodo]

He's grown on me. Not a great coach, but certainly a quality one. Maybe the 2nd highest ceiling coach in Bulls history behind Phil.

IMO, he's a decent amount behind Thibs too, probably behind Collins too.

I acknowledge that you need bend-over a little when dealing with stars, but the way he's stuck with Vuc this season has been frustrating.

What exactly did Collins do as Bulls coach? He is most known for going 3-8 vs Detroit in the playoffs and getting fired for Phil Jackson. His biggest claim to fame after Chicago was taking a 35-31 Philly team to the semi finals and only did that because Rose tore his ACL.

We were 30-52 with Michael Jordan. Collins took over and we went 40-42 in the next season, and then 50-32. The Detroit Pistons were the NBA champions, you make it sound like any random guy should be able to coach a 1 star team against a repeat champion. The 80s Lakers & Celtics lost to Detroit as well, KC Jones & Pat Riley are not bad coaches because they lost to Detroit.

Donovan has done nothing remotely close to Collins as a Bulls coach, a single 1-4 playoff appearance. In the CBS article for coaches he was ranked 25th. Coaching is very subjective, but the general consensus is that he's nowhere near Spoelstra, Kerr, or even his own assistant Daigneault.
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/ranking-every-nba-coach-for-2024-25-season-jj-redick-at-the-bottom-pop-outside-top-10-and-no-1-in-own-tier/

But Donovan got into the Hall based on his 500 win NCAA career and his massively winning OKC record. His Bulls stint was irrelevant to that. The skillset for college is completely different, he was able to recruit elite talent to his teams. On OKC he was able to get 3 MVP caliber players to work together. He deserves the accolades for that, both of which are more about people & ego management.

But in the situation in Chicago of squeezing out wins from teams with no stars, until this season he has never had a competent gameplan. In a NBA where it was obvious that 3s were winning the game, he had Chicago as the least 3P shooting team in the league. He also had us walk up the ball to be one of the slowest paced teams in the league. Both those could be OK if the trade off is elite defense, but our defense was garbage as well (hard to blame him with Vuc in the middle). But if you know Vuc is your goaltender so your defense will be crap, you should be running and shooting 3s like we've been doing this year.