Billy Donovan and Jim Boylen might as well be from different planets.
One head coach built his reputation through player development and mutual respect, while the other built his on “gritty” practices and late timeouts. The approach of the former has landed Donovan gig after gig as he’s worked his way up the coaching ranks. The approach of the latter earned Boylen a first-class ticket out of Chicago and enough bad press to fill the United Center.
The fact that the Bulls turned to someone with much different coaching philosophy is not all that surprising. Typically when a franchise makes a head coaching change, they try to make sure their new hire’s strengths were the previous coach’s weaknesses. Boylen had many weaknesses (which is likely why we saw Arturas Karnisovas target a proven head coach who could fill several areas of need), but his greatest was simply understanding his players.
Whether it be the countless eye rolls from Zach LaVine or snarky comments from Denzel Valentine, the Bulls locker room lacked mutual respect. Even worse, it didn’t really seem like Boylen tried all that hard to create any. Nothing quite shows the difference between Donovan and Boylen like the stories tied to each coach’s first couple of days as an NBA head coach. As many Bulls fans painfully remember, Boylen almost caused a player mutiny after trying to force his players through grueling practices. Donovan, on the other hand, took an incredibly different approach with the Oklahoma City Thunder, and he described as much in a recent interview on The Young and the Rowdies podcast.
In a conversation with his former Florida Gators standout Patric Young, Donovan talked about his transition to becoming an NBA head coach and how his first couple of weeks were spent with far more listening than demanding.
I knew going in there [Oklahoma City] that I had to, so to speak, catch up to them. I think the first game I coached in the NBA was against the San Antonio Spurs, it was our opening game, my first time coaching, and you’re going through shoot around that day and you have to accept the fact that Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant have played against Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker, and Tim Duncan for seven straight years, and they’ve played in playoff series. They know these players inside and out, how to guard them. I needed to pick their brain to get information from them.
Donovan’s situation may not have been the exact same as Boylen – who was taking a team he had a prior working relationship with – but this is still the entirely opposite approach. Donovan went on to joke about some of the mistakes he made, and further emphasized the importance of working hand-in-hand with his players. For a front office that has stressed the need to become a player-first organization, this sounds exactly like the person they want leading their new era.
Donovan has already appeared hard at work with a similar start to his Bulls tenure. While he surely understands more about coaching at the NBA level, the effort he seems to put into understanding new players is all the same. We learned he spoke with all his new talent shortly after being hired, and he also asked Lauri Markkanen how he would like to see his role changed. All things considered, we have already seen the dynamic inside the Bulls organization drastically change.
If that’s the atmosphere Donovan can create without even being around his new team, we should all be excited to see what he can do on December 1st when training camp is set to start.