The Chicago Bulls‘ choice to re-sign many players from the squad that missed the NBA Playoffs last season has been a topic of discussion surrounding the franchise a lot this offseason.
Despite the team’s lack of success, Bulls head coach Billy Donovan has so far avoided criticism. Will he be fired, though, if the Bulls have a rough start to the season?
Belief in Donovan
Donovan clearly enjoys a high level of confidence from the Bulls. After all, they signed a contract extension with him at the start of the previous campaign. The team’s faith in him paid off in some ways, as he transformed a unit that relied mostly on its offensive strengths into a defensive unit that finished in the top five of the league’s defensive rankings.
Elias Schuster commended Donovan for making the effort to achieve it. Schuster wrote : “Let me make one thing clear: I don’t think Billy Donovan is the Chicago Bulls’ primary problem. If anything, he deserves a fair amount of praise for taking a team initially built around offense and turning them into a top 5 defense last season. It’s also not his fault that the core this front office built didn’t make a ton of sense from the beginning. All were high-usage score-first guys, and the moment Lonzo Ball went down was the moment Donovan’s hands were tied,”
Not impervious to criticism
The facts bear this out: despite a superb squad and generally good health, the Bulls were unable to advance to the postseason. Donovan, along with the rest of the squad, is equally accountable.
Schuster added “At the same time, he isn’t void of criticism. The fact of the matter is that everyone deserves blame for the significant step backward that the organization took last season. As the leader of this team, it is up to him to find a way to make the most out of what he has. And, well, I think we can all agree that the talent on this roster is better than a 40-42 record,”
