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Jamal Collier
Multiple Authors
CHICAGO — Bulls CEO and team president Michael Reinsdorf on Tuesday outlined the qualities he is looking for in a new head of basketball operations, including one major requirement — retaining Billy Donovan as head coach.
“If I interview someone and they’re not sold on Billy, they’re not sold on a Hall of Fame coach,” Reinsdorf said during a video call Tuesday, “they’re not sold on a person who’s won championships in college, who’s gone deep in the playoffs with Oklahoma City. … If Billy wants to be our coach and someone’s not interested in that, then they’re probably not the right candidate for us.”
Donovan is scheduled to meet with ownership the day after Sunday’s season finale to discuss his future, Reinsdorf confirmed Tuesday. Reinsdorf said he did not expect Donovan’s decision to take long, but he reiterated that he wanted Donovan to remain as coach and even planned to push him to be more involved in personnel decisions.
One day after the Bulls fired vice president Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley, Reinsdorf explained his decision to move on after six years with the duo at the helm, addressing the fans in his opening statement about building a “real and sustainable winner.”
“Over the last few months, I started looking at where we were at and I thought to myself, ‘How are we going to get out of this mess?'” he said.
With a week remaining in the regular season and the Bulls at 29-49, Reinsdorf made the change. He cited the Bulls’ abundance of cap space this summer and potential lottery picks, including an extra first-round pick owed to Chicago if Portland makes the playoffs, as a blank slate for a new direction.
“I just felt like now is the time,” he said. “We tried the other route. It didn’t work. We failed and now we’re in position to get this right — clean slate.”
Reinsdorf confirmed an ESPN report earlier Tuesday that the team was planning to engage a search firm to work alongside himself, senior advisor John Paxson and the current basketball operations team to find Karnisovas’ replacement. The Bulls did not use one when they hired Karnisovas in 2020. Reinsdorf recalled being resigned to video calls at the start of the pandemic during that process, and acknowledged Tuesday that he didn’t meet Karnisovas in person until after he got the job.
However, Reinsdorf vowed to cast a wider net during this search. He listed out the qualities he was looking for in the next top decision maker, including being process oriented and “not afraid to pull the trigger.” He also wants someone who follows trends and is a better communicator, both internally and externally to fans and media, which Reinsdorf acknowledged was not a strength of Karnisovas.
“I want someone who’s really strong in communication,” Reinsdorf said. “What are we trying to accomplish? What is the plan? Our fans have a right to understand what we’re trying to accomplish.”
But Reinsdorf also has one other requirement for his perspective hire. He voiced his displeasure for tanking as a strategy Tuesday, saying “that’s just not who we are as an organization.”
“It’s unfair to the coach. It’s unfair to the players. It’s actually unfair to our fans,” Reinsdorf said. “Sure, there are some fans, many fans who might say, lose games on purpose, tank, do whatever you can to hopefully win the lottery. But there are a lot of fans that go to the games who aren’t there to see us get blown out every game and who want to see us compete.”
However, Reinsdorf also chided Karnisovas’ approach of Karnisovas of chasing short-term wins such as when, during the span of a few months in 2021, the team acquired DeMar DeRozan, Nikola Vucevic and Lonzo Ball.
“Going forward, it’s about sustainability,” Reinsdorf said. “We want to build this for the long term. I don’t want to be just good for one or two years. I want it to be year in and year out, we have a chance to be competitive and win.”
