Paxson betting on Boylen with future
Executive vice president sold rebuild to ownership. Now he’s trusting coach with leading the franchise. K.C. Johnson,
Scott Skiles hadn’t coached in the NBA for about 21 months when John Paxson made a relatively stealth hire in November 2003 to replace Bill Cartwright, the former teammate whom Paxson had fired.
The Skiles-Paxson relationship worked. Until it didn’t.
Paxson hasn’t perfected the process of hiring a coach, which is easy to say since few executives are able to do it five times. To be fair, though, Skiles and Tom Thibodeau were good fits who performed well. And that’s before taking into account the Reinsdorfs’ role in Vinny Del Negro’s hiring after a lengthy search and Gar Forman’s “national” search of Ames, Iowa to hire Fred Hoiberg.
Jim Boylen, whose deal was extended Friday, has the strong backing of and relationship with the Reinsdorfs. Paxson has been praising Boylen’s teaching habits, direct communication and ability to hold players accountable since he replaced Hoiberg on Dec. 3.
Ownership and management always are aligned on the front end of a coaching commitment but seem even more in lockstep on this one.
And it’s a critical one as the Bulls enter Year 3 of a rebuild that Paxson most strongly sold to ownership with the June 2017 trade of Jimmy Butler.
Boylen is his own man who has worked to earn this opportunity. But it’s possible to see some similarities to previous hires.
Like his move from Cartwright to Skiles, Paxson wanted Boylen to change what he perceived as a lax culture that had developed under Hoiberg. Like his move from Del Negro to Thibodeau, he wanted a grinder devoted to film study who could turn two decades as an assistant into success as a head coach.
At his season-ending news conference April 11, Paxson twice mentioned becoming a “relevant” team again after two seasons of wandering in the wilderness known as an NBA rebuild. This is Boylen’s charge.
Already, there’s speculation in some league circles that Boylen won’t be coaching the Bulls if they get good again, that, to make another comparison to the franchise’s coaching history, he’s a “Point A to Point B” stopgap. Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf lamented that Doug Collins couldn’t push the Bulls to Point C when he signed off on Jerry Krause’s wildly unpopular decision to replace Collins with Phil Jackson after Collins had coached in the 1989 Eastern Conference finals.
Such speculation about Boylen’s future is unfair, of course. He hasn’t held a training camp as an NBA coach. He hasn’t coached a full season. And the roster is miles away from contending for conference championships.
But Boylen needs to reward ownership and management’s faith in him, particularly when a vocal segment of the fan base isn’t on board with this move. He has to establish a more consistent defensive philosophy. And particularly in light of the Bulls not joining the 3-point shooting parade, Boylen needs to wring maximum potential from the multi-ballhandler system he has used with some success.
Coincidentally, Collins, whose hiring Paxson advocated for in 2008 before Jerry Reinsdorf nixed it during the winding search that led to Del Negro, is around as a senior adviser. He and Boylen talk regularly.
Boylen also talked with Jacksonon a 2018 offseason retreat to Montana that Paxson and Reinsdorf helped arrange and Boylen cherished greatly. And maybe you hadn’t heard, but Boylen has worked for Rudy Tomjanovich and Gregg Popovich.
That’s a lighthearted reference to Boylen’s habit of name-dropping both coaches often, particularly early in his tenure.
This part got lost a bit in Boylen’s heavyhanded delivery: He did so as much out of respect to those two title-winning coaches as to prop up his own credentials, which were being heavily questioned.
Come September, they’ll still be questioned, just as Paxson’s ability to identify the right coach will be.
There’s a lot at stake for both Boylen and Paxson. Coaches, the saying goes, are hired to be fired. Reinsdorf-hired executives, the local joke says, work on lifetime scholarship.
Paxson doesn’t believe in that. But he believes in this rebuild.
“He’s never said that,” Paxson said April 11, when asked if Jerry Reinsdorf has mandated this rebuild work or else. “But I think we’re all smart enough to know the reality of this business. We convinced Jerry and Michael that this (rebuild) was the right way to go. … We’re in the business of winning.”
The Bulls are 662-634 with 11 playoff appearances and five series victories in Paxson’s 16 seasons since he succeeded Jerry Krause in April 2003. They’ve won — but not the big one.
And not enough.
It’s now on Paxson’s rebuild vision, Boylen’s coaching chops and the players to change that.