In his first few weeks on the job, new Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas has made four significant hires to the front office, including Marc Eversley being officially introduced as general manager on Friday.
So why the indecision when it comes to head coach Jim Boylen and the rest of the current coaching staff?
Some things warrant the slow game.
“It is really early,’’ Eversley said, when asked about the Boylen situation. “Coach and I did have a conversation earlier in the week where he called to congratulate me on accepting the position. Just like anything else on our staff, we are going to utilize our time to evaluate everybody on staff — not only players, coaches, but also people in the front office as well. I’ve spoken to Coach, we had a really great conversation and I’m looking forward to spending time with him in Chicago when we’re afforded that opportunity.’’
Which is the first major issue in making the decision on Boylen.
With the coronavirus shutting the league down since early March, no one knows what NBA Commissioner Adam Silver will come up with as a solution to possibly finish this season out or simply walk away from the 2019-20 campaign.
That is why there are so many clouds of indecision with Boylen. Until the Bulls know what the league is going to do, they are not going to move on the staff, only to then find out that the rest of the regular season is in fact going to be played.
The other aspect of it is the Reinsdorfs really like Boylen, and would undoubtedly like the new regime to at least evaluate him as much as they can under these circumstances, before passing judgment.
“My initial impression of Jim is he cares a great deal about this team and he’s as anxious as everyone else to get back in the gym,’’ Karnisovas said. “My first priority was to hire Marc, [and other department heads] J.J. Polk and Pat Connelly in order to implement my vision, our vision, to create a sustainable program that can be good for a very long time.
“Going back to coaching, we’ve had a chance to meet a couple times over Zoom, but it’s not only been two weeks. Like I said before, I’m going to do my comprehensive evaluation of every department and ensure I give the process the time it deserves. We are limited right now with what we can do. Instead of being in the practice facility and being in Chicago, we’re at home doing video and audio calls like this one. It makes it difficult. So until we get to some level of normalcy, and I don’t know what that looks like, we will not be able to fully access the current situation.’’
Karnisovas has spoken with Bulls players, and Boylen has been a topic, but again, it sounds like both Karnisovas and Eversley want eyes on practices and interactions to get a fair sense of what’s going on.
“Again, I think we owe it to everybody on staff to get to Chicago and meet them face-to-face,’’ Eversley said. “I think we owe to our players to hopefully get to evaluate them in practice settings, in playing settings. And we owe it to our staff to see them in those types of settings as well. I just think it’s far too early to make those types of decisions with respect to anybody on the staff until we get to Chicago.
“That will ultimately be a joint decision.’’
