Is this Billy Donovan’s best year of coaching in the NBA?
It’s too early to make any conclusions, but leading indicators say yes.
Donovan won 55 games in his first season in Oklahoma City in 2015-16 and guided the Thunder to the Western Conference finals, where they lost in seven games to the Golden State Warriors. But Donovan inherited a superstar in Kevin Durant, and the Thunder were only two years removed from a 59-win season in which they lost in the conference finals to the San Antonio Spurs.
After Durant left for the Warriors, Donovan took the Thunder to the playoffs the next four years. But they failed to win a playoff series, leading to his exit after the pandemic-altered 2019-20 season. His first season in Chicago last year marked the end of the Bulls rebuild, leading to wholesale roster changes by executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas.
The Bulls entered Monday’s game against the Phoenix Suns with a 33-20 record — good enough to be in a five-way scramble for the Eastern Conference lead but nowhere near the kind of dominance displayed by the 42-10 Suns.
The Bulls have struggled to beat the league’s best teams, going 0-3 against the Philadelphia 76ers and 0-2 against both the Warriors and Miami Heat. And a depleted starting lineup has exposed the team’s lack of depth. In Sunday’s game against the 76ers, Donovan had star DeMar DeRozan in the game with the likes of Matt Thomas, Malcolm Hill, Tony Bradley and Alfonzo McKinnie.
DeRozan said he felt fine after playing 41 minutes and that the “adrenaline rush” kept him from thinking about his playing time. With Zach LaVine out, he knew he had to suck it up. Donovan trusts DeRozan to be honest with him, and DeRozan nearly pulled out a win for the Bulls with a 45-point performance. But he can’t afford to do that every night, especially in early February.
Injuries and COVID-19-related absences have been the proverbial sand in the Bulls’ gears all through this season, preventing them from knowing exactly how good this team is. Since Nikola Vučević's COVID-19 stint when the Bulls started a West Coast trip in early November, it has been one thing after another.
But the Bulls went on an 18-6 run after being smoked by the Warriors in the first game of that trip, proving their resiliency through the COVID-19 outbreak. They’re 7-10 since that stretch and haven’t won more than two games in a row.
With Thursday’s trade deadline looming, Karnišovas now faces his biggest question since taking the reins of the Bulls: Add on to an injury-depleted roster that figures to be together by the end of the regular season — or stay the course and wait for Lonzo Ball, Alex Caruso, Patrick Williams and Derrick Jones Jr. to return?
Donovan won’t make the final decision, of course. But his thoughts on the matter should weigh prominently in whichever direction Karnišovas goes. The Bulls architect has watched Donovan keep the Bulls afloat throughout all the obstacles and certainly trusts the coach’s instincts. The Bulls have a laid-back personality, led by veterans DeRozan, LaVine and Vučević.
Which brings us back to the original question: Is this Donovan’s best year of coaching in the NBA?
“It’s really more the guys’ (credit), to be honest with you,” Donovan said Sunday. “I’m not trying to put off the question. These guys have been really invested in the team, they’ve been invested in one another and they have always been invested in putting their best foot forward to try and win. And they’ve always kind of handled themselves, and I just appreciate that when guys go out, you’re not (thinking), ‘Oh, my god, is this guy going to be able to play? Is he going to compete? Is he going to bring it physically?’
“I’ve had none of that. And that part of it has been very rewarding and I’ve been very grateful because there have been teams that dealt with it and maybe guys hadn’t been able to and guys hadn’t been able to overcome it. We’ve had to overcome some things. There have been some games we’ve fallen short of and missed some opportunities, and you know, we probably won some games we probably shouldn’t have. So it maybe balances itself out.
“But the guys have been incredibly easy to deal with. They’ve handled themselves really well, and when they do that, that makes my job a lot easier.”
The Bulls might not be the best team in the East. But if they finish among the top four, they at least can secure home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. It looks as though the five-way race with the Heat, Milwaukee Bucks, Cleveland Cavaliers and 76ers will remain close — with the Brooklyn Nets also on the periphery of the race as they await Durant’s return — and one big move could be a deciding factor.
The Cavaliers already improved Sunday by acquiring guard Caris LeVert from the Indiana Pacers, just after LeVert burned the Bulls for 42 points Friday in Indianapolis. And the Nets and 76ers are expected to be aggressive at the deadline.
DeRozan suggested Sunday that only the media are saying the Bulls need to make a move and that the team has enough to win with Ball, Caruso and Williams all expected back before the season ends.
If they do stand pat, the Bulls in essence will be betting on Donovan to keep his team in the middle of the race until the cavalry arrives in the next month or so.
