Bulls Rumors: Donovan, Front Office, Ownership, Ivey, More

The Bulls fired executive VP of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley on Monday, but Marc Stein reported on Sunday that the team hopes to retain head coach Billy Donovan, and Shams Charania of ESPN has heard the same (Twitter video link).

“My understanding is the Bulls want to keep [Billy Donovan] as long as he wants to be there, in Chicago,” Charania said on NBA Today. 

Donovan, who signed a multiyear extension with the Bulls last summer, is expected to draw interest from rival NBA teams with head coaching vacancies this offseason, according to Jake Fischer of The Stein Line (Twitter link), who confirms Chicago would like to keep the 60-year-old.

As for potential front office replacements, Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic suggests Timberwolves GM Matt Lloyd could be a name to watch (Twitter link). Lloyd is well regarded around the league and began his NBA career in Chicago, Krawczynski notes.

Here are some more rumors and notes on the Bulls:

• Team sources tell Jamal Collier of ESPN that ownership had been considering a front office overhaul “for weeks,” and the urgency to do so increased after the team traded for — and then waived — Jaden Ivey. While the front office defended the homework it did prior to acquiring Ivey, ownership had questions about the process involved and Karnisovas and Eversley had a “credibility problem” around the league and with the team’s fans, according to Collier.
• Collier hears there was a “growing disconnect” between the front office and several areas of the organization, not just ownership. Bulls employees were reportedly unsure of the team’s direction after it traded away several veterans ahead of the February deadline to add seven second-round picks. “People didn’t know the plan,” one team source told ESPN on Monday. “They didn’t know the process. We needed to move on — with a clean slate and start this thing over.”
• According to Collier’s sources, Karnisovas and Eversley long maintained they were “working under the constraints of ownership,” which was reluctant to embark on a rebuild. Donovan also isn’t a fan of rebuilds, Collier writes, even though the team was stuck in mediocrity for years.
• Collier suggests the front office’s relatively underwhelming trade returns also factored into the decision to let Karnisovas and Eversley go, pointing out that the team took to long to break up the previous core roster of Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, Nikola Vucevic, Alex Caruso, Coby White and Lonzo Ball.  “We took too long to pick a lane,” the team source told ESPN. “The Lonzo thing just really messed them up. We saw that success early on, and didn’t have the foresight to pivot early.” Ball missed two-plus years due to a knee injury which required multiple surgeries.
• While the Bulls want to retain Donovan, Collier hears it may not be as head coach, depending on what Donovan wants to do in the future. As Collier writes, Donovan’s father and mother-in-law both passed away within eight days of each other in February, and there has been previous speculation that the veteran coach might take a year off to reevaluate his options moving forward.