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

[coldfish]

If Boylen keeps his job nothing about this organization has changed. He will never be a head coach again.

We should probably be clear about stuff. The move away from GarPax to a more structured organization with people specializing in scouting, personnel, analytics, etc. is a pretty major change. Its going to be YEARS before we can really evaluate it though. The Bulls have nothing in their back pocket that is going to give them a leg up for a quick turnaround. No capspace, no draft picks, no young player who looks to jump into elite status, etc.

The Bulls are truly in a terrible situation. We probably undersell it here because we are fans but this is really ugly. They have a team that talent wise is capped out at being around a 40 win team with lots of contract issues.

Boylen is basically just a fleck of poop in a huge septic tank of it.

[TheFinishSniper]

Am I suprised. Nope. Am I disgusted. Yes. Am I dissapointed. Nope. Am I going crazy given I still somehow care for this franchise. Yes. Do I believe in better tommorow. Yes. But do I believe in better tommorow of Bulls. Nope.

Why. It's things like this.

[sco]

Real Gm ers think they know more about basketball then Boylen lol. Let’s not get carried away here he isn’t a random bum. Boylen had been coaching(mostly as an assistant) since the 80s with a lot of NBA experience. Sure he may not be the best coach for the bulls but he knows a hell lot more basketball than all of us on this board.

I'm not pro-Boylen, but I agree that so much of the criticism and hyperbole around him makes me come to his defense frequently. So many of these opinions are just insane.

This.

If we do keep him, I wonder if we could bring in someone to be in charge of the offense and install a new system. The defense gambled a lot, but it was tolerable.

[jc23]

There is no benefit to coming out and saying Boylen sucks and will be fired soon. I think the FO understands the perception fans and players have about Boylen. Assuming there is a next season we will have a new coach.

[dougthonus]

I had originally responded point by point, but distilled down to these few things instead:

i have to say, the devil's advocating / pushback against anti-boylen stuff is...insane to me?

It's not devil's advocate. It's people saying things which literally are objectively and completely false with zero percent chance at being true.

Like what I responded to was "people on this forum could coach the team better than Boylen". There is zero percent chance that is true. It is objectively ridiculous.

So I completely get why such hyperbole may not bother you, but it isn't devil's advocate. It's saying let's actually accurately portray what the situation is, which, while bad, is no where near as bad as the people on this forum as a whole thing it is.

he stinks. he very plainly obviously stinks. there is no case to be made for him, only a boring "he's not the only problem!" or "coaching isn't even really that important" argument that ignores the fact that we should obviously expect better from the head coach of our favored basketball team

I get that sports fans like to take super extreme views and that every time someone isn't good enough they're the worst ever and when someone is good then they're the best ever instead of thinking about things from a rationale perspective. I don't know Boylen personally, I've met him once in a crowd to get to say something stupid like "hello, good luck this year". However, maybe it's just my personal outlook on life, but I have a hard time when people denigrate people. These are still real people trying to do their best, and someone like Boylen I'm sure is working passionately at his task.

It's totally fair game for a sports fan to say whatever they want on a sports forum, I personally struggle with people absolutely trashing other human beings well beyond what is accurate or deserved by inventing truth, distorting facts, exaggerating events, and speaking in hyperbole. From a human perspective, I think it's an awful trait to have as an individual regardless of whether you are discussing sports or not. It isn't how I would want to be treated, and I try to avoid speaking of others this way (just don't look up comments I probably made about LeBron James in 2010, or in other words, I fail my own morality test plenty of times too).

So yeah, even if there is absolutely no reason to keep Boylen, and outside of cost, I think that's true, I'll still defend him when people trash him beyond what is even remotely reasonable and maybe that's just my personality flaw

[WindyCityBorn]

If Boylen keeps his job nothing about this organization has changed. He will never be a head coach again.

We should probably be clear about stuff. The move away from GarPax to a more structured organization with people specializing in scouting, personnel, analytics, etc. is a pretty major change. Its going to be YEARS before we can really evaluate it though. The Bulls have nothing in their back pocket that is going to give them a leg up for a quick turnaround. No capspace, no draft picks, no young player who looks to jump into elite status, etc.

The Bulls are truly in a terrible situation. We probably undersell it here because we are fans but this is really ugly. They have a team that talent wise is capped out at being around a 40 win team with lots of contract issues.

Boylen is basically just a fleck of poop in a huge septic tank of it.

LaVine is the only guy on contract making major money past next season and he makes 3rd option money. Our cap situation is in no way terrible.

[rtblues]

The term, "some random bum" was used here, which I totally agree with...

Oh, wait, the poster was saying that "he's NOT some random bum", never mind

[StunnerKO]

My head hurts

Read on Twitter

?s=21

[ChettheJet]

Mos of you probably need to calm down. An employee told his hometown sports reporter that he has a relationship with his new boss. Would he really say anything else? Hey I talked to the new management and I've already cleared my belongings out of my office because the day is coming when security comes and escorts me forcibly from the building because I told hose guys what clowns they are.

[coldfish]

If Boylen keeps his job nothing about this organization has changed. He will never be a head coach again.

We should probably be clear about stuff. The move away from GarPax to a more structured organization with people specializing in scouting, personnel, analytics, etc. is a pretty major change. Its going to be YEARS before we can really evaluate it though. The Bulls have nothing in their back pocket that is going to give them a leg up for a quick turnaround. No capspace, no draft picks, no young player who looks to jump into elite status, etc.

The Bulls are truly in a terrible situation. We probably undersell it here because we are fans but this is really ugly. They have a team that talent wise is capped out at being around a 40 win team with lots of contract issues.

Boylen is basically just a fleck of poop in a huge septic tank of it.

LaVine is the only guy on contract making major money past next season and he makes 3rd option money. Our cap situation is in no way terrible.

Assuming Otto picks up his option, the Bulls are capped out for now. Its true that they don't have a lot of long term contracts but at the same time, to get capspace in 2021 they are going to have to let some people walk. Lauri probably among them.

Just in general though, people need to have some patience with AK. Between the lack of capspace, no additional picks, pandemic limiting financial options, etc. his hands are really tied for quite some time.

[dougthonus]

LaVine is the only guy on contract making major money past next season and he makes 3rd option money. Our cap situation is in no way terrible.

I think what Coldfish means, and I agree with him to an extent, is that you are going to have to make decisions on guys like Lauri/Wendell soon, and if you choose to pay them, they're highly likely to be guys that are overpaid, and if you decide not to pay them, you have next to nothing on the team.

We can open up cap room in 2 years, but it seems unlikely we'll be able to leverage it for significant improvements the way things are currently situated. Unless you can lure max FA caliber guys, cap room usage tends to have you overpay people and collect bad contracts.

[ATRAIN53]

Jim Boylens Agent - Jim did you see that interview with Reinsdorf? He's worried about profits. He's still paying Hoiberg and Thibs to NOT coach here so I'm pretty sure that means you're not getting fired anytime soon.

Boylen-

[dougthonus]

My head hurts

Read on Twitter

?s=21

Would love to read the whole article, but after buying the athletic last year and looking at probably five or six articles all year, I'm not going to purchase it again just for this one.

Even greater bummer, looked and my subscription ended just five days ago

[holv03]

I think Boylen could improve as a coach specially if he becomes more open minded. He needs to improve certain things about his coaching. He takes time outs at the wrong time, his offense needs improvement all around and he needs to improve on his rotations. Do I want a new coach? Absolutely but we need a legit good coach. I wouldn't replace him for Kenny Atkinson or any other coach who doesnt have a strong resume.

[dougthonus]

I agree with many things you've said.

Years of experience doesn’t remotely equate to success in any profession, despite what elders may have you believe. It certainly can, but talent and IQ will trump experience. Brad Stevens resume wasn’t close to Boylens when he left college, and his abilities run circles around his elder Boylen. Being an assistant coach for long periods of time guarantees nothing.

Completely agree that experience doesn't equate to success, and I don't think anyone views Boylen as a success as a head coach either.

However, 20 years of experience at some extremely prestigious places and absolutely a sign that you are talented, well regarded, and aren't a complete imbecile, which seems to be the overriding opinion. Especially in a small niche industry where everyone talks and knows each other.

You simply don't get the types of jobs Boylen has had if you're a moron that knows nothing about what they're doing. So no, I don't think Boylen's assistant coaching experience makes him a good head coach, and I don't think he's been a good head coach, but I do think he knows a whole lot about basketball and has quite a bit of talent around the basketball side of things.

What he lacks, most likely, are the leadership skills required to be at the top and to get people to buy into his message and want to pull for him. Those are skills that no amount of assistant coaching is going to give you necessarily because those are the parts that are fundamentally a totally different role.

Half of the battle of a head coach today is getting a group of 20 year olds to play the best basketball they can. That includes leading them, relating to them, teaching them, knowing when to push them and when to pull back. Boylen has failed in these areas so many times it’s difficult to keep track. He has the typical personality of a boomer, his brain is a step too slow for a head coach position but his ego will always tell him otherwise. It’s amazing he can tie his own shoes, regardless of how long his resume says he’s been in this industry.

Agree completely with the first half of this and would say for a head coach that's actually probably 90% of the battle not 50%, and that he doesn't seem to do well in this areas at all and that's the big problem. I think the agism and insults in the second half, and arguments like this are where I get defensive of Boylen. They're just meaningless insults not based on anything.

I don’t doubt that Boylen knows more than 90% of message board posters when it comes to basketball. In no way does that make him a good head coach.

Switch 90% to 100% and switch more with "orders of magnitude more" and the first part is still accurate, but so is the second part. Even the lowest assistant NBA coach would be able to make the same claim if they've been in the league for a few years, it doesn't make them at all qualified to run a team, and I don't think anyone would say otherwise.

[MikeDC]

If you believe Boylen is "not a moron", how do you explain away the moronic things he's done?

Do you just think that letting your player writhe around on the court injured instead of calling a timeout is not moronic?

How about stuff like calling timeouts with a minute left in a game you're losing by 20 points. Is that a smart thing to do, or a dumb thing?

How about politicking to get your head coach fired? Smart thing or dumb thing?

Somehow, all of the other coaches in the league (and like 99.9% of the former ones) manage to get through their tenures without ever doing such dumb things even once. Boylen, on the other hand, managed to do all of them (some of them repeatedly) within the course of a year.

[weneeda2guard]

I'm not worried about it at all.

Once that teams left out bubble happens and the public can be reminded of how disorganized and poorly coached we are, the pressure will mount to move on from boylen and the new regime will oblige.

[2018C3]

https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/bulls/bulls-wendell-carter-jr-jim-boylen-participate-in-juneteenth-march

[ImSlower]

Would love to read the whole article, but after buying the athletic last year and looking at probably five or six articles all year, I'm not going to purchase it again just for this one.

Even greater bummer, looked and my subscription ended just five days ago

Doug, was it simply an issue of you never getting around to reading the site, or a question of quality? I think my subscription there, my first ever online-only paid written content, has been vastly worth it. Mayberry is excellent. Mark Saxon for my Cardinals is pretty dang good, though I have a blog I frequent that's so superb for Cardinals content that the Athletic is mere icing. I'm a baseball geek moreso than basketball, and Joe Posnanski alone deserves my money for how fun his 280,000 word 100 Greatest Baseball Players columns were (despite his terribly wrong and stupid opinions on certain players I loathe).

Their stable of NBA writers is impressive. The comments section suffers from some very vocal but well-spoken trolls, but in general has a lot of great contributors beyond the paid staff.

No worries; I only would have guessed you'd be an avid reader there.

And on the topic of that article, dammmmn Mayberry is perhaps at his best when he is voicing the displeasures of many fans in his silky smooth and even-handed delivery. My "Boylen sucks, I hate his timeouts and 3rd quarters, he looks like Jeff Daniels, and he should be fired." is a stale cheeseburger, but Mayberry delivers the best slow smoked brisket in the county.

[dougthonus]

Would love to read the whole article, but after buying the athletic last year and looking at probably five or six articles all year, I'm not going to purchase it again just for this one.

Even greater bummer, looked and my subscription ended just five days ago

Doug, was it simply an issue of you never getting around to reading the site, or a question of quality? I think my subscription there, my first ever online-only paid written content, has been vastly worth it. Mayberry is excellent. Mark Saxon for my Cardinals is pretty dang good, though I have a blog I frequent that's so superb for Cardinals content that the Athletic is mere icing. I'm a baseball geek moreso than basketball, and Joe Posnanski alone deserves my money for how fun his 280,000 word 100 Greatest Baseball Players columns were (despite his terribly wrong and stupid opinions on certain players I loathe).

Their stable of NBA writers is impressive. The comments section suffers from some very vocal but well-spoken trolls, but in general has a lot of great contributors beyond the paid staff.

No worries; I only would have guessed you'd be an avid reader there.

And on the topic of that article, dammmmn Mayberry is perhaps at his best when he is voicing the displeasures of many fans in his silky smooth and even-handed delivery. My "Boylen sucks, I hate his timeouts and 3rd quarters, he looks like Jeff Daniels, and he should be fired." is a stale cheeseburger, but Mayberry delivers the best slow smoked brisket in the county.

Honestly no idea really. I think in general, if a site is mainly op-ed, that I'd rather just be on a forum which is more interactive. So for op-ed stuff, I get my fix reading opinions here. I didn't find Mayberry/Noh to be particularly better than say anyone writing for blog-a-bull or my own blog when I had one. Nothing wrong with that, I found them to be exceptional bloggers, but that didn't stand out enough for me to visit the site compared to this one which just aggregates all useful information and is more interactive.

I don't actually mind paying for content, I've paid for ESPN Insider for probably nearly as long as it has existed, and I'll pay for other written content too when I think it is valuable and unique. I could see why someone would say these writers are really top notch, but I didn't consume enough of their stuff to care.

I also literally only ever read their Bulls stuff, so maybe I'd be more interested in the overall stuff, but there are so many good sites for general NBA content.