There is a certain amount of delusion when it comes to assessing Billy Donovan and his offseason contract extension.
Specifically, from the coach’s own fan base.
It’s almost as if his in-town critics forget the history of the chair Donovan has been sitting in since taking over the Bulls before the 2020-21 season.
First, it’s important to remember that the head-coaching job for this organization is not a good one and hasn’t been for a long time. Need evidence? Just look at the two best coaches in franchise history in Phil Jackson (.738 winning percentage) and Tom Thibodeau (.647 winning percentage), and how they were discounted in the eyes of the front office and ownership and eventually pushed out.
Make that shoved out. Neither left on a good note and both went on to repeat the success they had elsewhere. Coincidentally, both were also replaced with college coaches from Iowa State. Tim Floyd took over for Jackson and sported a 49-190 record (.205 winning percentage), while Fred Hoiberg grabbed Thibodeau’s chair, going 115-155 (.426) in his three-plus-year tenure.
As the Sun-Times reported years ago, there’s a reason then-Mavericks coach (now with the Pacers) Rick Carlisle — who is president of the National Basketball Coaches Association — was warning potential Bulls coaching candidates not to take the gig.
Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf operates in a very specific hierarchy. He has done that with the Bulls and the White Sox. Coaches/managers always have been the low man on the totem pole no matter how successful they are or how strong the culture they establish is.
Jackson, and his six rings, found that out when he got into a staring contest with Jerry Krause, Thibodeau lost the cold war with Gar Forman and John Paxson, and World Series champ Ozzie Guillen was traded away by Kenny Williams.
It’s a Reinsdorf philosophy that hasn’t changed even with his teams hitting rock bottom in the wake of those decisions time and time again. The fact that a top-10 coach — yes, he’s a top-10 NBA coach — like Donovan has navigated his place in the hierarchy long enough to put pen to paper on two contract extensions in itself is astonishing.
There’s not a lot to credit Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas for, but he has understood the importance of Donovan to the organization and embraced the idea of continuity from that head-coaching office.
Now, if he could only start supplying his coach with high-end talent.
The best team Karnisovas has given Donovan was the 2021-22 squad, and before they lost Lonzo Ball for the next two-plus years, it was a first-place team. Not that anyone believed that they could make a championship run if they stayed healthy, but they would have been better than the first-round loss to Milwaukee that postseason.
Since then, Donovan has had to try turning lemons into lemonade.
Zach LaVine’s best non-empty-calorie season came under Donovan, evident by the career-high 7.1 win share in the 2022-23 campaign, DeMar DeRozan re-established his name as an MVP candidate under Donovan, Alex Caruso became a two-time All-Defensive award winner, while Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu and Matas Buzelis each have taken huge strides in their development.
Pointing to Lauri Markkanen’s one disappointing year with Donovan is somewhat disingenuous because the forward was already checked out in his trust with the organization, while the Patrick Williams situation is more about bringing the horse to water and begging him to drink. Some players just need a change of scenery, no matter who the coach is.
This will be Season No. 6 for Donovan. He has changed the style of play to fit the roster and the league trends, he has shown he can build a top-10 defensive team with the right pieces, and he has done so ego-free.
That’s why he has been embraced by his bosses and allowed to still captain an underwhelming ship.
Unfortunately, not all the passengers aboard understand that.