Billy Donovan leaving Bulls after front office change

Billy Donovan leaving Bulls after front office change

After a major shakeup in the Chicago Bulls front office, head coach Billy Donovan is departing the team, the team announced Tuesday.

The move comes after Chicago fired vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas and general manager Marc Eversley, making a major front office change with the Bulls finishing up their fourth straight losing season under the duo. Karnišovas, Eversley and Donovan were all hired in 2020, as part of the last major overhaul in Chicago.

In the wake of firing Karnišovas and Eversley, Bulls president Michael Reinsdorf made it clear that the team wanted to keep Donovan on going forward.

“Billy is a Hall of Fame coach who not only has my respect, but the respect of the entire organization and locker room,” Reinsdorf said in a press conference after the announcement. “While we will handle any conversations about the coaching staff the same way we always do at the end of the season, I wanted to be very clear: We want Billy to continue to be the coach of the Chicago Bulls. At the end of the day, this is about bringing in a new leader for our basketball team that can build a winning team that our fans can be proud of.”

When pressed more about the issue, Reinsdorf doubled down with a telling response, sparing Donovan from a lot of the Bulls’ struggles and noting Donovan’s induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame last September.

“If I’m interviewing someone and they're not sold on Billy and they’re not sold on a Hall of Fame coach, they’re not sold on a person who has won championships in college, who’s gone deep in playoffs in , who I believe with the Chicago Bulls every year, given the team he was given, he achieved really good results — not the results we wanted, but that was not because of Billy,” Reinsdorf said. “So if someone is not interested in Billy as our coach and Billy wants to be our coach, and someone is not interested in that they are probably not the right candidate for us.”