Hot seat watch: 4 NBA coaches who could be fired this season
By Kevin Reyes
2. Billy Donovan, Chicago Bulls
Billy Donovan has twice now been brought into an NBA franchise with the task of leading a competitive team, and the results have been mixed. He did a good job at leading the 2015-16 OKC Thunder to the Conference Finals, but eventually blew a 3-1 lead to the Golden State Warriors. The team suffered back-to-back disappointing first-round exits in 2018 (vs Utah Jazz) and 2019 (vs Portland Trail Blazers), the latter of which led them to rebuild. And though they had a surprisingly great season the following year, we can all agree that was more of a Chris Paul effect.
In 2020, he was brought to the Bulls as the first head coach of the Arturas Karnisovas regime in Chicago. The next year, they had a quartet of Lonzo Ball, Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic, and they were set to compete. They were doing just that, getting off to an elite 27-11 start, but lost Ball to injury and haven't been the same again. This season, they've started 5-13, and that follows a sub-.500 campaign where their stars (sans Ball) were healthy. The offense hasn't played well the last two seasons, there have been various incidents of dysfunction within the team, which include star players being benched and multiple players-only meetings, including one after the first game of this season.
At their best, this team was primed to be super competitive. We can look back at this attempt by management to try to compete as a good one and one that could've worked if it wasn't for injuries. However, at some point, you have to move on from something that didn't work, regardless of the reasons as to why it didn't. Whether it's to try to compete again next season or to move on to a new phase of team building, the Bulls could end up looking for someone new to coach them sooner rather than later.