The Chicago Bulls Hire a Head Coach for Remainder of Season Vol. Mistake

[h1]Boylan to take reins of Bulls for remainder of 2007-08 season[/h1]
Associated Press

Updated: December 27, 2007, 3:20 PM ET

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DEERFIELD, Ill. -- Jim Boylan was promoted Thursday to interim head coach of the Chicago Bulls, who fired Scott Skiles on Monday after the team's disappointing start.

Boylan

Boylan was in his fourth season as an assistant under Skiles and has 14 years experience in the NBA but none as a head coach at the pro level.

"Jim has paid his dues as an assistant coach and has his own ideas on the way he wants us to play," Bulls general manager John Paxson said in a statement.

Assistant coach Pete Myers was in charge of the team during Wednesday night's 94-79 loss at San Antonio that dropped the Bulls' record to 9-17.

The 52-year-old Boylan also has been an assistant in Cleveland under Mike Fratello (1993-97), Vancouver under Brian Hill (1997-2000), Phoenix under Skiles (2000-01) and Atlanta under Terry Stotts (2003-04).

He also coached in the Continental Basketball Association and in college, including stops at Michigan State as an assistant under Jud Heathcote (1986-89) and as head coach at New Hampshire (1989-92).

As a player, Boylan helped lead Marquette to the 1977 NCAA Championship. He was later drafted by the Buffalo Braves in the fourth round of the 1979 NBA draft.

Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press

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BY JAY MARIOTTI Sun-Times Columnist

This is a spit-and-snort football town. This is a smack-feuding baseball town. This is not a basketball town. It used to be a Jordan town, as history and pop culture demanded, but once the dynasty was dismantled, the Bulls devolved into what they've always been: Something to do during the winter, yet nothing that taps into the city's generational or sociological lifeblood.

Which is why small thinking can't be tolerated when it comes to hiring the next long-term coach. In Year 10 since the sixth championship, the Bulls are no closer to the NBA Finals than they were when Jerry Krause was trying to recruit Tim Duncan and Tracy McGrady by dispatching Benny the Bull and the Luvabulls to greet them at O'Hare. Just as Scott Skiles lost his players -- and, consequently, his job -- there is some danger of losing Chicago if chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and his suddenly shaky hoops boss, John Paxson, don't make a high-impact statement with their coaching decision.

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GM John Paxson knows what he wants from his players. He should take this opportunity and coach the Bulls the rest of the season.
(Tom Cruze/Sun-Times)

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Can you say niche sport? I can, particularly as the renaissance of the Blackhawks warms the United Center.

But here's the problem with my grand design: The job isn't exactly the NBA's most attractive, considering the Bulls lack a go-to scorer, a low-post offensive presence and anything resembling a star. And to make it attractive, Reinsdorf would have to offer big bucks, not likely when he's paying Skiles almost $7 million over the next year and a half to hang around with his kids in Bloomington, Ind. My grand design would be Mike Krzyzewski, who grew up a few streets from the UC and will be a national hero next August if he leads a revived Team USA to Olympic gold. Yet do I think Coach K is leaving Duke? No. And if he did want to try the pros, would he do it for a lowball deal with a team stuck in NBA no-man's-land? No.

There is a campaign brewing, too, for Larry Brown, who took over a superstar-less Detroit Pistons team that once was compared loosely to the Bulls and won an NBA title in 2004. Again, Reinsdorf has more interest in lunching with Donald Fehr than paying Brown-type money -- his last deal with the Knicks was for $50 million over five years, which was whittled down to a $18.5-million buyout when he was dumped after one season. And with Brown now 67, isn't this the last headache he needs in his life? Plus, given his failures with the Knicks, what makes anybody think he could co-exist with Paxson and jump-start a team that had the same shooting and energy issues in a 94-79 loss Wednesday night in San Antonio?

So as we watch a strange and thoroughly uninspiring interim arrangement unfold -- assistant Pete Myers filling in until another assistant, Jim Boylan, takes over -- Paxson may have only one viable option these next four months if he seeks to maintain public interest. It's a suggestion he already has dismissed, but if his own employment future depends on it and no quality candidates are available to reinstill discipline and chemistry and life, it's something he should consider.

Paxson's next coach?

John Paxson.

Hey, if Johnny Jumpshot is so convinced his creation was mishandled by Skiles, why doesn't he take the reins for a while? If he sees qualities in his players that the rest of us haven't seen since last season, why doesn't he coax it out of them over a 56-game stretch?

``That will never happen,'' Paxson said on Christmas Eve, the day he fired Skiles.

If he wants to remain the long-term general manager, he might not have a choice. His favored plan at the moment is to become more active with the club's on-court direction via Boylan, whose last head-coaching job was at the University of New Hampshire in the early '90s. While Boylan has paid his dues as an NBA assistant-coaching lifer and was interviewed by the Indiana Pacers for their head-coach position last summer, let's face it: He's a low-profile neophyte who would be learning on the fly. Not only that, he has been the confidante of Skiles for four seasons and shares the same philosophies. In the week's most telling quote, guard Chris Duhon told ESPN Radio: ``If you have a problem playing for Scott, you're gonna look at Jim in the same way because he's Scott's right-hand man.''

Rather than funnel his ideas through a puppet, Paxson owes it to the franchise -- and himself -- to maximize the potential he sees. Maybe it turns out poorly, as it has for Isiah Thomas on the sideline in New York and it did for Kevin McHale in Minnesota. All I know is, Michael Jordan once felt strongly enough about Paxson that he wanted him as his original coach in Washington, an offer Paxson rejected because he wanted to watch his sons grow up. Years later, his oldest son, Ryan, is a sophomore guard at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais. His younger son, Drew, is a high-school upperclassman.

Four months, Pax. That's what we ask -- and what you should ask of yourself.

``I never absolve myself from responsibility," Paxson said. ``We all felt confident we had a team that was going to be pretty good this year. Our players now are put in a position where they have to look in the mirror and see what they can do to get this back on track. The message wasn't being received by them. A lot of the pressure is on them right now.''

Then remind them from the sideline, in every huddle.

``I don't see this as something magical is going to happen where all of sudden everything goes right,'' Paxson said. ``There are a lot reasons we're in the position where we're (9-17) and playing poorly. Our guys are going to get back to playing together and playing hard and playing with commitment.''

Didn't see much of it Wednesday, did we?

``I'm disappointed in the way we're playing, the way we're competing,'' Paxson said. ``Our lack of playing with passion and energy, those are things that matter in this league. Good teams always seem to play that way, and we're missing that. I honestly believe we're a better team than we've shown. Guys have proven that in the past, they're young and they should be coming into their own as players.''

Think Jim Boylan will pry it out of them?

If Paxson can't successfully coach Paxson's team, no one can. We then would know the foundation is flawed and that a wholesale housecleaning should happen next summer, when the Bulls potentially will have more than $18 million to spend along with making decisions on whether to match expected offers for Luol Deng and Ben Gordon. Talk continues around the league that Paxson would trade the useless Ben Wallace and regressing Kirk Hinrich to New Jersey for Jason Kidd and Jason Collins, but isn't Kidd too problematic for Paxson?

You'll be hearing many coaching names -- retreads like Rick Carlisle and Mike Fratello, an ESPN pitstopper like Jeff Van Gundy, a second-chance prospect like Dwane Casey, promising assistants like Tom Thibodeau and Chuck Person.

For now, I want to hear Paxson's name. Only he can clean up his own mess.

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Originally Posted by koolbarbone

Looks like this season is a wash.

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Originally Posted by jblackcat13

I blame this bad season on _obe..........

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jblackcat13 wrote:

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I blame this bad season on _obe..........

SoHi 23 wrote:

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You do have a point, the players probably weren't too happy with their names
being thrown around involving posible trades for Kobe.

BTW Jblack, what would you have done if Kobe did get traded to the Bulls

I disagree.

Someone on ESPN said something a couple weeks ago that I completely agree with. I'm pretty sure it was Jeff VanGundy during a game ESPN was airing.

Whoever it was, he was responding to someone saying something like that you guys are saying. Someone had said something along the lines of, "I bet theplayers all took an emotional hit having their names tossed around like that." And the guy I agree with said, "Are you kidding me? They WEREN'Ttraded for Kobe! If I were one of those guys, I would feel GREAT about myself! Basically, the Bulls just told the Lakers that they will not trade Kobe for meand my buddies. They'd rather have US instead of the greatest player in the game. I would be going out every day busting my tail off after that."

I agree.

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