CLEVELAND, OHIO - JANUARY 25: Head coach Jim Boylen of the Chicago Bulls signals to his players ... [+]
When Chicago Bulls head coach Jim Boylen was asked about the team’s goals heading into the 2019-20 season, he confidently stated they wanted to make the playoffs. There was a modest amount of hype surrounding the Bulls at the time, so it wasn’t an outlandish statement at all.
Instead, the Bulls currently sit at a disappointing 20-39, 6.5 games behind the Orlando Magic for the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference. Injuries have played a role in this wretched record, but a mostly healthy Chicago squad started the season poorly against a soft schedule. Over the course of the 2019-20 campaign, the Bulls have defeated one team with a winning record all season (1-22), meaning they never established themselves as a team to be taken seriously at all.
Boylen has been roasted by the fan base and media alike, with national media recently taking note of his bizarre fascination with timeouts late in losses. The embattled head coach holds a 37-80 record since taking over for Fred Hoiberg last season.
But the way Boylen sees it, he’s doing a great job.
Before the Bulls’ 124-122 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday night, Boylen was asked about his poor win-loss record and how that plays into the front office’s evaluation of him. K.C. Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago transcribed the lengthy, defiant response:
“It is a win-loss league, but that’s not the only thing that gets evaluated. Are we establishing a style of play? I think we have. Have we cleaned up our defense that needed to be cleaned up? I think we have. Have we established a shot profile that’s top five in the league? I think we’re three right now in the shots we get compared to other teams. So those are all positive things,” he said. “And then you can look at the what-ifs, which I don’t do very often. With our shot profile, what would Otto Porter do in that shot profile? He’d be pretty successful. And Lauri Markkanen and right on down the line.
“I’m not worried about my personal record or my win-loss record. I’ve been asked to establish a style of play, to have a disciplined approach and develop a young group of guys. And in my opinion, we are doing that. Case in point – Coby White’s improvement, Daniel Gafford’s improvement. Cris Felicio, I think, is doing a heckuva job for us. So play the guys you have and hopefully make them better.”
Boylen even claimed nobody in the organization has talked to him about a certain amount of wins as a goal, despite his big talk about playoffs. Consider the goalposts moved:
“It is hard for me. But that’s not my calling. That’s not what they ask me to do. Nobody in this organization said to me, ‘You got to win this many games.’ Nobody said to me, ‘Hey, we’re going to talk about wins and losses all year.’ Not one time have they said that to me. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to win. It doesn’t mean we’re not trying to win, but nobody said that to me.
“I have to honor the organization with trying to do this thing the right way. If we do that and if we can get healthy, I feel good about it.”
Boylen finished up by saying he’d be surprised if he’s fired at the end of the season. In his defense, he was just given a contract extension last offseason even after a mostly disastrous stint in 2018-19, and all indications are he has supporters in ownership and management.
Still, the Bulls have to know what kind of backlash they’d get if Boylen is brought back. Social media is abuzz after just about every game with fans mocking Boylen’s quotes and decision-making. People are constantly on the lookout for moments of Zach LaVine frustration with Boylen, something the Bulls star just addressed after a viral video came out in which many thought he was cussing out his coach, but it actually turned out to be an opponent. Wendell Carter Jr. could only laugh during All-Star Weekend when a fan yelled out “Fire Boylen” to him during an event:
Making big decisions based on fickle fans typically isn’t smart, but it’s not like the Bulls would be bailing on the next great head coach here. Boylen was lucky to get his extension without a real coaching search after last season’s mess (remember the mutiny in his first week?), and while there have been signs of improvement on the defensive end this season, the overall picture isn’t pretty. The Bulls haven’t established a style of play that looks sustainable for long-term success, and the culture remains one of losing and irrelevance.
As Johnson notes, the forthcoming changes in the front office could play a key role in Boylen’s future. The Bulls are reportedly expected to bring in a new hire who’s “expected to have significant autonomy in basketball operations,” even with John Paxson still around. One would think that new hire would want to bring in his own head coach.
It’s unclear just what Boylen’s contract looks like (last season he was given a raise to $1.6 million for this season before his offseason extension), but in the grand scheme of things it wouldn’t cost the Bulls much to cut ties. The franchise hasn’t done a real coaching search since hiring Tom Thibodeau in 2010, so it would be worth it to actually explore all options and be willing to pay top dollar for a coach. The Bulls may be a mess right now, but this should still be an attractive job.
Jim Boylen may think his job is safe, but reality says that shouldn’t be the case.
