NEWSLETTER
When the Chicago Bulls organization hired Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley, it felt like being up 25 points with a quarter to go. We’re going to win! Fast forward two months, and that lead’s blown. How the hell did that happen!?
While the Bulls aren’t necessarily right back where they started, the rumored news of a Jim Boylen return sure takes the wind out of our sails. On top of that, we’ve gotten reports about players feeling that little has changed and Reinsdorf handcuffing the new front office. Not good. The last time Karnisovas or Eversley spoke publicly was in June, and their silence has been deafening.
Fortunately, as we frustratingly await some kind of update from those running the show, color commentator Stacey King is here to make us feel a tiny bit better about the Bulls’ future. In a conversation with David Schuster and Mark Schanowski on the Sharp Shooters podcast, King talked about the ongoing coaching situation and the franchise’s new direction.
According to him, the new regime has “every opportunity to turn this thing around.” Warranted skepticism has grown about Karnisovas’ full autonomy over the past several weeks, but King seemed adamant that there are no barriers in front of the franchise’s new leader.
To be honest with you, I know people are reading it from the outside, but on the inside, he has full autonomy to do whatever he wants. They have an opportunity to make the changes they feel necessary, to make this franchise be one of the elite franchises again. That’s their job.
I want to believe King, but I’m not fully there (and I probably will not be until I at least see another pivotal firing, hiring, or trade). King’s words, though, do appear to be somewhat consistent with ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and NBC Sports Chicago’s K.C. Johnson, who all still allude to “time” as a key reason to why we haven’t seen a sweeping change.
They want to really do their due diligence and evaluate him fairly. They want to give him an opportunity to see what he can do. You can’t be pressured by the outside, you have to make good decisions, and I think they’re going to take their time … Is his XO’s a problem? Is his game management a problem? I mean, that’s something they’re going to have to look at. And I think that’s why they’re taking their time, to see what the problem was. What’s the reason why this team who has so much young talent – like a Phoenix, a Sacramento, like Memphis has – are not producing like they should?
Moreover, King didn’t necessarily defend Boylen during his podcast appearance, which is noteworthy. And I think he makes a solid point when he poses the questions seen above. Karnisovas and Eversley may want to find out exactly why this player-coach combination doesn’t work, and something like that is hard to do when the team can’t practice/operate normally. The optimistic point of view is that this remains less about Boylen specifically and more about learning who would work as the future coach of this team. In other words, it’s one thing to say Boylen is the problem, it’s another to identify all the problems.
Interestingly enough, King also stressed another point made by Wojnarowski this past weekend: The Bulls might want to speak with coaches currently in the bubble.
You also got to remember too, there are coaches that they may be looking at right now that are on other people’s teams that are playing in this bubble, so they can’t contact those people are talking to anyone until basically the season is over. Unless a team gets knocked out, they can’t do anything. So right now they’re probably just doing their due diligence and just seeing what they have here, evaluating him on a day-to-day basis. And, like I said, I’m not there. I don’t make those decisions, but I’m sure that’s the direction they’re going.
To be clear, King isn’t saying a coaching change is definitely the direction they are heading, but rather that this evaluation is still day-to-day. Which … I guess is something. He also expressed earlier in the podcast that he’s heard the team should be able to open up practices a bit more in the coming weeks, which could provide the sort of additional evaluation of the coaches Karnisovas and Eversley have gotten yet.
He wasn’t shy about expressing his excitement for, and “full utmost confidence” in, the new regime. I know King’s job is pretty much to be optimistic about the team, but he didn’t have to make some of these statements if he didn’t want to. Also, for what it’s worth, I find him to be refreshingly critical at times. On broadcasts, he hasn’t been afraid to call out guys for not carrying their weight, and despite his friendship with John Paxson, he freely admitted that change is a good thing for the Bulls organization. If he says he thinks the Bulls are in an okay place right now considering the circumstances, I’ll at least believe it a little.
Lastly, I loved what he had to say about the Bulls missing out on the bubble. He didn’t say they deserved a shot, but rather that this experience is good for them: “Maybe this is the motivation that we needed for this young team to kick it into another level, that’s what I would hope. That’s what, if I was there and I was coaching, this is what I would be telling my players. You need to have a chip on your shoulder.”
Coach King, anyone?
