Billy Donovan is about to do his best to make this roster excuse proof.
There will be no more, ‘’They took away my mid-range,’’ “This new offense has been a big change,’’ or “My arms are sore from practice pushups,’’ coming from players.
The new Bulls head coach isn’t into making players change their strengths to fit his system. Instead, he will build a system that fits what this roster does well.
Refreshing?
Well, more like actually just what a good coach does.
“The first thing I’ll do is watch a lot of film,’’ Donovan said recently, when discussing the transition he will be making in his new gig. “I think being in the league for five years, even though we’re playing in the West, you’re playing Chicago twice so you have a feel for some of those guys. But I also think too, one of the things I’ve always felt like is important when you’re building out different things offensively is I think you’ve got to spend time with players to let me hear from them how do they want to be used. How do they feel like they’re most effective? What are things they feel most comfortable doing? How can you take advantage of their skillset and their offense? And I think you go through that with the players and talking to them and getting their opinions and their thoughts.
“And then you build out from there of how you want to play.’’
So the days of making square pegs fit round holes sounds like it’s at an end. Thankfully.
Even during the Tom Thibodeau coaching era the old front office never seemed in sync with what the coaching staff wanted and needed as far as personnel.
Thibodeau, however, was elite enough to overcome that.
Fred Hoiberg was hired for his offensive mindset and never received the players to fit his system, while Jim Boylen tried making a poor three-point shooting team into the Golden State Warriors.
Donovan doesn’t operate that way, and his resume from Oklahoma City backs that up. So when he insisted that he will build this outward based on the individual strengths of his key players? Print it.
“There’s things philosophically that are very, very important to me in terms of ball movement and player movement,’’ Donovan said. “It always comes down to the end result. The end result is how good of shots can you create on a nightly basis. That’s what you’ve got to be able to do is create good shots. And how you go about doing that utilizing each guy’s skill set. The same thing defensively. How do you build out? How are you going to guard pick-and-rolls? How are you going to guard certain screening actions, certain movements? And you build out from there.’’
Donovan has already been in frequent contact with the likes of Zach LaVine, Lauri Markkanen and Coby White.
Expect that dialogue to continue as Donovan dives deeper and deeper into the film work the next few months.
“I’d want to talk to those guys about where they think they’re at their best, where they think they can be most productive and effective, and then you partner with them and you work with them and you build out something where there’s going to be a level of sacrifice by every player,’’ Donovan said. “Every player is not going to have the chance to do everything that they want to do. But how do you mesh all of those guys together to get the whole to be better than the sum of the parts as a team? That would be my philosophy going forward.’’
