Cowley: Bulls have poor reputation among NBA coaches

[johnnyvann840]

Rumor: Bulls have poor reputation among coaches
By Dan FeldmanJun 11, 2020, 11:00 PM EDT


Bulls general manager Jerry Krause repeatedly tried to replace legendary coach Phil Jackson. Despite previously insisting he wouldn’t quit, Tim Floyd “resigned” as Chicago’s coach on Christmas Eve 2001. The Bulls fired Bill Cartwright the Monday following Thanksgiving Weekend 2003. Chicago fired Scott Skiles on Christmas Eve 2007. Bulls executive John Paxson actually fought coach Vinny Del Negro, who got fired in 2010. Paxson and Chicago general manager Gar Forman repeatedly clashed with Tom Thibodeau, who got fired in 2015 despite his successful record. The Bulls hired long-rumored replacement Fred Hoiberg then left him out to dry as players walked all over him.

Does that coaching history explain why new Bulls president Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley are being so deliberate in assessing current coach Jim Boylen?

Joe Cowley of the Chicago Suns-Times on 670 The Score:

"There is a perception problem, and when you come from the outside – like Arturas did and Marc Eversley have – you know what that perception problem is. Carlisle, the Dallas coach, has made it very clear the disdain the coaches association and a lot of coaches have for the Bulls and the practices they have toward coaches. The way they’ve treated them as commodities for more than three, four decades, the way they’ve fired guys on Christmas Eve. So, there is a perception problem that I think these guys want to change coming in now to this that the old regime didn’t care about nor did they maybe even see fully."

It’s twofold. They’re buying time because they have time to buy, but also I think it’s also a perception thing that they’re looking to change.

As long as Jerry Reinsdorf sits in that powerful chair and he’s allowed executives to treat managers and coaches like this – look, everyone thinks players talk. Coaches talk, too. This place – in the Bulls and the Advocate Center – does not have a good reputation with coaches.

Coaches love to claim other coaches got unfairly victimized, circumstances barely mattering. That isn’t changing.

Will Chicago’s reputation change?

https://nba.nbcsports.com/2020/06/11/rumor-bulls-have-poor-reputation-among-coaches/

[Dominator83]

Good read, but you should probably change the title from "NBA has poor reputation" to "The Bulls have a poor reputation"

[dougthonus]

https://nba.nbcsports.com/2020/06/11/rumor-bulls-have-poor-reputation-among-coaches/

I thought this was worthy of its own topic, since we have so few topics on the board.

I was looking back at the Bulls coaches, and the Bulls MO around coaches is this:

Hire someone whom is very questionable to deserve an opportunity for the job at all that for relatively cheap and not be afraid to get rid of them. It would seem like, overall, the Bulls don't think coaches make that big a difference and treat their hires that way. Ironically, of the Bulls coaching hires, Tim Floyd and Fred Hoiberg may actually have been their most deserving head coaches resume wise.

Jackson - Plucked out of the Puerto Rico league, they fired Collins for losing to the NBA champion Pistons which Jackson did the next year with a more experienced team.

Floyd - Was a legitimate hot shot college coach whom had success everywhere he went.

Cartwright - Only an Interim, so not sure how much I'd count him, but was given his only opportunity to do this.

Skiles - Pulled off the scrap heap after an epic flame out in Phoenix

Boylan - Only an interim so doesn't really count, but clearly not a deserving guy

VDN - Taken with just a little broadcasting experience and no coaching experience

Thibodeau - Was an assistant for 29 years before getting a shot, don't think many assistants wait that long and ever get a shot, if it doesn't happen early then it usually means you have something in your rep IMO.

Hoiberg - Not really a spectacular college resume in length or quality, had NBA work prior to that which also wasn't that high in quality with the Wolves

Boylen - Was an interim but given the full time job, long time assistant, maybe reasonably deserving of a chance

Negative things:
Jackson - Underpaid for years, in massive public feud with management.
Floyd - Fired on Christmas Eve
Cartwright - Nothing real negative IMO
Skiles - Fired on Christmas Eve, though he also reportedly walked in and said he couldn't do it anymore, so I don't think this one is real negative either.
Boylan - Only an interim so nothing real negative
VDN - Literally choked him
Thibodeau - Owner went on a rant against him after letting him go
Hoiberg - Nothing particularly negative comes to mind
Boylen - Seem like we're treating him with respect so far

If you look at how reasonable they ultimately were with everyone, I'd say:
Jackson - Unreasonable and stupid, should have paid him, no reason this relationship should have been bad.
Floyd - Reasonable, he got way longer of a leash than warranted
Cartwright - Reasonable, they probably shouldn't have kept him on at the start of that next season though
Skiles - Reasonable, he walked out on the team mostly and was burntout
Boylan - Reasonable, only an interim
VDN - Unreasonable, shouldn't have to be said, but you don't choke a guy, though reasonable to let him go otherwise
Thibodeau - Unreasonable, he was great in Chicago and even if it was time for a new voice, no reason to publicly run over him on the way out.
Hoiberg - Reasonable, he underperformed for a long time, nothing really acrimonious or unfair happened
Boylen - Reasonable, was questionable to give him full time gig to begin with, and being fair so far on the way out.

[sco]

I think the question should be looked at by FO regime instead unless you think Reinsdorf was quietly pulling the strings (which I don't).

IMO, most bad coaching decisions stem from one of two situations:

1) Rebuilding cycles - teams who are rebuilding tend to shy away from (wanting to pay-up for) top, experienced coaches. They tend to want guys who can relate to young guys, keep them happy during losing seasons and instill a work-ethic culture.

2) Insecure FO's who have failed a few times already and want to have more of a hand in the coaching style by hiring likable puppets.

[troza]

Jackson - Plucked out of the Puerto Rico league, they fired Collins for losing to the NBA champion Pistons which Jackson did the next year with a more experienced team.

Your post was excelent but let's just add information here... Collins on his second season with the Bulls did worse in the regular season than what he did the year before.

And the justification for the change was the style of play of the team and I think that is something important... oh, and that thing with Krause that was championship caliber or bust (in this case worked fine but not on the Elton Brand to Chandler trade).


From your post it is funny that we had some coaches that actually were good calls with some background work... Some failed (Tim Floyd, but I guess that he was doomed to fail after the dynasty) and some succedded (Thibs). But the majority were shots in the dark although the situation of the team was ideal for that.

About the reputation... I see lots of things on the Bulls being bad due to reputation. Well... Krause isn't here, Paxson isn't here... we keep on pushing with the reputation narrative but let's face it... the teams we have aren't that appealing (except when we went for Thibs) and some choices were just bad at the start... nothing to do with reputation about the coaches.

[dougthonus]

Your post was excelent but let's just add information here... Collins on his second season with the Bulls did worse in the regular season than what he did the year before.

And the justification for the change was the style of play of the team and I think that is something important... oh, and that thing with Krause that was championship caliber or bust (in this case worked fine but not on the Elton Brand to Chandler trade).

Even with all those things, to go with a completely unproven Jackson as head coach was a gigantic leap. Obviously a great move based on the results, but man was it a bold thing to do. Though sports was just like that back then too. So much less information and analytics. Even the story of Krause becoming GM would be nuts by today's standards.

From your post it is funny that we had some coaches that actually were good calls with some background work... Some failed (Tim Floyd, but I guess that he was doomed to fail after the dynasty) and some succedded (Thibs). But the majority were shots in the dark although the situation of the team was ideal for that.

About the reputation... I see lots of things on the Bulls being bad due to reputation. Well... Krause isn't here, Paxson isn't here... we keep on pushing with the reputation narrative but let's face it... the teams we have aren't that appealing (except when we went for Thibs) and some choices were just bad at the start... nothing to do with reputation about the coaches.

I think AK/ME's early work is doing a lot to fix some reputational things to the extent they exist, but people tend to associate reputation with success regardless. No one talked about Paxson or Forman or the Bulls having a bad reputation up through 2012 when they had generally done really well and completed two quality rebuilds. At that point, they had completely turned around Krause's poor reputation.

[DASMACKDOWN]

If you look at how reasonable they ultimately were with everyone, I'd say:
Jackson - Unreasonable and stupid, should have paid him, no reason this relationship should have been bad.
Floyd - Reasonable, he got way longer of a leash than warranted
Cartwright - Reasonable, they probably shouldn't have kept him on at the start of that next season though
Skiles - Reasonable, he walked out on the team mostly and was burnout
Boylan - Reasonable, only an interim
VDN - Unreasonable, shouldn't have to be said, but you don't choke a guy, though reasonable to let him go otherwise
Thibodeau - Unreasonable, he was great in Chicago and even if it was time for a new voice, no reason to publicly run over him on the way out.
Hoiberg - Reasonable, he underperformed for a long time, nothing really acrimonious or unfair happened
Boylen - Reasonable, was questionable to give him full time gig to begin with, and being fair so far on the way out.

In all of this though, we are still talking about 2 people. Jerry Krause and John Paxson.

Of course JR is ultimately responsible because he owns the franchise but Krause and Pax created that culture.

What I am hoping is that AK and ME create a new culture we can all be proud of for years to come.

We are about to hit a totally new regime for the Bulls in a general sense. We have a new front office, we have new announcers, we have new play by play people. Its a full change. I hopefully that sins of the past will also be forgotten.

[MGB8]

Not surprising. Coaches are scapegoats for front office mistakes in assembling talent and teams, not to mention a massive entitlement culture among NBA players that makes it generally very hard for coaches from other professional sports leagues (dealing with somewhat less rich grown men), much less college, to deal with.

And this is especially true of the Bulls.

[dougthonus]

Of course JR is ultimately responsible because he owns the franchise but Krause and Pax created that culture.

What I am hoping is that AK and ME create a new culture we can all be proud of for years to come.

We are about to hit a totally new regime for the Bulls in a general sense. We have a new front office, we have new announcers, we have new play by play people. Its a full change. I hopefully that sins of the past will also be forgotten.

One thing I think is true and worth repeating is culture is a myth to some degree in sports. Culture is mostly based on results. Rarely do you hear of a winning team with bad culture and a losing team with good culture. Because it's such a winner take all type of environment, winning determines all those other things.

People thought Paxson was amazing for culture and totally turned around the awful culture of Jerry Krause up until about 2012 or 2013, now we think he's terrible for culture all of a sudden.

It's really just when a team is bad, there's so much extra stress on everyone. I don't think any GM persists good culture through 3-4 consecutive bad seasons.

[Chicago-Bull-E]

The stuff from Thib's time here is from another world. Coaches turning on fans in offices because they fear the office is bugged, certain assistants feeding the front office information, holding Thibs hostage so he can't get another job, then completely throwing him under the bus when they fire him.

I can't think of many franchises coaches would despise more.

[ChettheJet]

How many teams do the coaches association really approve of? San Antonio because Pops has been there a long time. Every team, since Sloan retired in Utah, hires a coach knowing that unless he starts winning titles he's going to get fired or not given a second contract. An association of guys that get fired every 3-5 years isn't going to approve of any of the organizations that continually fires their members. The article takes a fast road to the dumpster when the primary source quoted is Joe Cowley of the bush league SunTimes

[tgmxd]

Of course JR is ultimately responsible because he owns the franchise but Krause and Pax created that culture.

What I am hoping is that AK and ME create a new culture we can all be proud of for years to come.

We are about to hit a totally new regime for the Bulls in a general sense. We have a new front office, we have new announcers, we have new play by play people. Its a full change. I hopefully that sins of the past will also be forgotten.

One thing I think is true and worth repeating is culture is a myth to some degree in sports. Culture is mostly based on results. Rarely do you hear of a winning team with bad culture and a losing team with good culture. Because it's such a winner take all type of environment, winning determines all those other things.

People thought Paxson was amazing for culture and totally turned around the awful culture of Jerry Krause up until about 2012 or 2013, now we think he's terrible for culture all of a sudden.

It's really just when a team is bad, there's so much extra stress on everyone. I don't think any GM persists good culture through 3-4 consecutive bad seasons.

To me, culture is something you build on the way up that holds all the pieces together when when things are going wrong and still allows the pieces to play better than the sum of their parts. I think its only able to hold its grip for so long though without some hope or things beginning to bounce back in the right direction

I can't think of a better example than the years immediately after D-Rose going down and how this team performed above expectations waiting for Rose to come back with guys like Nate Robinson and the year MJ retired for the first time. The MJ bulls were able to keep the ship going until MJ returned to basketball but the D-Rose bulls eventually ran out of steam once he kept getting hurt and then was a shell of himself

So its much more important in the bad times then the good

[othawhitemeat]

Until Michael completely takes over and I hope he does it right , this stuff is going to continue to pop up. Jerry ran it completely as a money business in an old school way. Hopefully AK will continue to evolve the Bulls. Maybe, we can regain trust but in past, we used coaches as a mouthpiece and cheap hires. That is why GarPax struggled with Thibs in fact that he was a strong enough figure to question some things. The egos of FO has been bigger than the coaches. The way coach Thibs was treated, Phil, and hiring of cheap coaches, this should ring true. Firing Hoiberg to use Jimbo the Clown was even worst. Not saying Hoiberg was the answer, but to us average peeps, no one thought Jim could seriously coach. Listening to him speak us enough.

[ATRAIN53]

doesn't really matter to Reinbsdorf now -

he just paid Thibs 5 mil per year to stay home and vacation-

also just paid Hoiberg 5 million a year to do the same thing

10 mil in coaches slaries for squat

He's done with high profile coaches. He knows there is a bevy of G League guys who will take the job for squat and do what he tells them to do. You watch a rookie coach like Nick Nurse win the NBA title it enforces that even more.

There are only 30 of these jobs - no one turns down an NBA coaching job when it's offered. NO ONE, regardless of who the owner is and how bad he is. Even Phil took the money from Dolan.

[League Circles]

Predictable hit piece by Cowley with the usual questions begged regarding when and why he selectively quotes people. Why not quote Carlisle instead of vaguely saying "he made it clear"? If he made it clear, just report what he actually said, unless, of course, what he actually said is less malicious and less interesting than the typical Cowley translation.

He's really a master of that. I despise him.

[League Circles]

IMO, the Bulls have done a bad job of hiring coaches, and a reasonable job of severing ties with them. I guess that grades out to something like a C- grade on coaching.

[RSP83]

I agree that I think there's very few successful high profile coaching hire in the NBA. My hypothesis is the correlation between veteran high profile head coach hiring and winning is probably low, I think roster makeup and talent has more significant stronger correlation with winning.

Thibs worked out in Chicago, but not in Minnesota. D'Antoni didn't do too well in LA and NY, after successful time in Phoenix. Frank Vogel was good in Indiana, failed in Orlando, now he's coaching LeBron and AD in LA, he's back in business. Guys like Carlisle, Doc, Bud they moved into a good situation, they chose well.

So, I kinda understand why JR is hesitant on hiring high profile coaches. I just hope our FO don't just dismiss looking at "trending up" available coaches (like Joerger, Atkinson, etc.) just because they think there's little value in investing a bit more for head coaching position.

My problem with our FO have always been more toward roster building. I think acquiring the best talent is the most important thing by a large margin in terms of building a successful franchise. When we had pre-injury Derrick Rose, everything seem to fall in to place almost perfectly for our franchise. It took a talent like that to change your franchise. But outside of lucking into Rose, I think we were never good or aggressive enough to try bring top tier talent to Chicago. We always lose out on top free agents, and I can't remember the last time we're even mentioned in superstar player trade rumors. The biggest one was probably the Kobe rumor back in like 2007. But we were never even close in those conversation. And our previous FO (GarPax) seemed to be too passive and like to settle for somewhat insignificant player acquisition (either through trade or free agency).

So, I think player personnel moves is area where our new FO can try to improve. I can't say that the previous FO tried to their best ability to bring in the best talent. We even lose our best talent since DRose in Jimmy Butler. So we suck because I think we've always settled for mediocrity and didn't do enough to push for getting the best talent.

[HomoSapien]

Not surprising. If anything it’s a surprise that it’s taken this long for the Bulls to get all this criticism.

[DASMACKDOWN]

One thing I think is true and worth repeating is culture is a myth to some degree in sports. Culture is mostly based on results. Rarely do you hear of a winning team with bad culture and a losing team with good culture. Because it's such a winner take all type of environment, winning determines all those other things.

Yeah I pretty much agree 100% That much is true even in MJ's case. Its a fine line between ultra competitor and complete tyrant. MJ's antics only is even accepted because he was a bigtime winner.

The same thing can be said of the Spurs or Patriots. Most would tell you, those franchises suck the life and soul out of you. There is only one voice that counts and thats Popp and Belichick. But its just "great" culture because they win alot.

Even if its just manifested, perception can and will change but just being more successful.

I have no idea how many games we will even win next year. But what we did realize that it was rock bottom where we were. I still dont expect major results till about a year or two. Either way, its in a better direction then where we were.

[dice]

Jackson - Plucked out of the Puerto Rico league, they fired Collins for losing to the NBA champion Pistons which Jackson did the next year with a more experienced team.

Your post was excelent but let's just add information here... Collins on his second season with the Bulls did worse in the regular season than what he did the year before.

And the justification for the change was the style of play of the team and I think that is something important... oh, and that thing with Krause that was championship caliber or bust (in this case worked fine but not on the Elton Brand to Chandler trade).

also, a coaching change isn't necessarily done with the expectation of immediate improvement. but the bulls got immediate improvement under phil. and that's despite implementing an entirely new and unique offense

collins was here 3 seasons, by the way