It has been a long time since the six-time NBA champion Chicago Bulls had a major front office shake up. It has not taken place in 35 years. But in the midst of another disappointing season, which has been suspended because of the COVID-19 Pandemic and having missed the playoffs in two of the last three seasons coming into this one, the organization felt new leadership was necessary.
On Monday, the Bulls (22-43) announced that they hired Arturas Karnisovas, the replacement for John Paxson as Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations. The team also announced the firing of General Manager Gar Forman after a decade in that role and 22 years in total with the Bulls.
The Bulls did say that Paxson, who had been the team’s EVP since 2003 after replacing longtime GM Jerry Krause will remain with the team in his new role as senior advisor of basketball operations.
“Gar Forman worked tirelessly for the Chicago Bulls organization, first as a scout and then as an executive,” Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf said in a statement on Monday. “He made many significant contributions during his time here and helped to bring some of the brightest young basketball talent to our team from Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson to Jimmy Butler and Coby White. He has been a trusted advisor and friend to me over the years, and on behalf of everyone I want to thank him for his commitment to the organization. Gar will always be a part of our Bulls family.”
The 48-year-old Karnisovas, who had been serving as the GM of the Denver Nuggets since 2018 and the Bulls according to ESPN’s NBA Senior Insider Adrian Wojnarowski, were finalizing the details on a multiyear contract late into the night of Apr. 8 after he was offered after a second round of interviews done by the organization was completed.
The first round of virtual interviews for the open GM spot by the younger Reinsdorf on Apr. 8 were completed following an interview with former Atlanta Hawks GM Wes Wilcox, who currently works as a studio analyst for NBATV.
“Our ultimate goal is clearly to bring an NBA championship to the city of Chicago. That is what every team in the NBA strives for,” Karnisovas, said on Apr. 11. “All we can control is our approach and the process behind every decision. A firm foundation is absolutely vital. I’ll build that here in Chicago. No skipping steps.”
Karnisovas had a lengthy virtual interview with Bulls Chief Operating Officer Michael Reinsdorf, the son of Jerry and the leader of the Bulls search for their vacant position on Apr. 7, according to ESPN. The next day, the younger Reinsdorf introduced Karnisovas to his father and got Mr. Reinsdorf’s blessing to offer him the position of general manager.
It is hard to fathom that the Bulls are in this position when you consider that back in 2011 Forman and Hall of Famer Pat Riley tied for NBA Executive of the Year in 2011, the season where Riley’s Heat signed now Los Angeles Lakers’ four-time league MVP and three-time Finals MVP LeBron James and Chris Bosh, and re-signed the recently retired Dwyane Wade in the summer of 2010.
Since that 2010-11 season, where the Heat defeated the Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals in five games, the Heat went on to win two titles in the next three seasons, making The Finals in four straight seasons, while the Bulls despite making the playoffs the next three seasons were bounced out of the postseason in the First-Round twice in the next three seasons, and lost in the 2013 East Semifinals to the Heat in five games once again.
What impressed the Bulls about Karnisovas was his solid history to evaluating talent and the strong endorsement of the 48-year-old’s leadership, ability to be organized, his organizational skills by the Nuggets from their Governor Josh Kroenke and their President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly.
Karnisovas’ diverse basketball background in the game also intrigued the Bulls right from the start of this process, including the role he played alongside Connelly and Kroenke in building the current Nuggets roster, which consisted the drafting of now All-NBA center and All-Star Nikola Jokic; the starting backcourt of Jamal Murray and Gary Harris and current Portland Trail Blazers starting center Jusuf Nurkic.
Along with his time with the Nuggets, Karnisovas also worked in the Houston Rockets front office as well as the NBA league office in New York, NY after a decorated EuroLeague and Olympic-medal-winning career on the hardwood, that began for the Lithuanian native collegiately at Seton Hall University.
Karnisovas will be in charge of reshaping a Bulls squad back that has since the 2013-14 campaign entering this current one has missed the playoffs in three of the last five seasons, and had gone just 2-23 against teams .500 or better this season before the suspension due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Also, has made many questionable roster additions in this period that looked good on paper but did not work on the court.
On May 28, 2015, the organization gave the axe to then head coach Tom Thibodeau, who in three of his five seasons guided the Bulls to 62 victories in his first season in 2010-11 and two 50 wins exactly in his second and fifth season respectably. Thibodeau complied a .647 winning percentage in his five seasons on the Bulls’ sidelines, despite Rose, the 2010-11 Kia MVP missing 213 games because of injury.
Also, Thibodeau’s squads fell as previously mentioned three times in the postseason to James (with both the Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers).
That said, the civil war that had developed between Coach Thibodeau and the front office, which axed the previous head coach in Vinny Del Negro. Thibodeau faced the same fate as Del Negro did.
Forman had said back then that after firing Coach Thibodeau that the search for his replacement would be extended to “anyone around the country we want to talk to.”
That extended search took less than a week as the Bulls had hired then Iowa State head coach and former NBA sharp-shooter Fred Hoiberg on a $25 million deal back in early June 2015.
According to an ESPN.com article though, this move had already been in the works because Hoiberg, who was the head coach at Iowa State University, where Forman as an assistant coach.
After playing his first four seasons with the Bulls, Forman bought the home Hoiberg was living in after he signed with the Minnesota Timberwolves in free agency in 2003.
While the team got off to a decent start in Hoiberg’s first season at 15-10, signs of trouble came after a 107-91 loss at the New York Knicks on Dec. 19, 2015, which was on the heels of a 147-144 loss in quadruple overtime loss versus the Detroit Pistons the night before.
It was here where the mild-mannered approach of Hoiberg was not meshing with a squad that had a serious cohesion with the demanding, defensive-minded, kick you in the paints style of Coach Thibodeau.
Two specific players that were not on the same accord with Hoiberg were current Heat All-Star Jimmy Butler and then All-Star center Joakim Noah.
“I’m sorry, I know Fred’s a laid-back guy, and I really respect him for that. But these guys aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do, you got to get on guys, myself included,” Butler said after that loss at the Knicks. “You got to do what you’re supposed to do when you’re out there playing basketball. … We weren’t doing what we were supposed to be doing, what we wrote up on that board before the game. And nobody spoke up about it.”
That constructive criticism by Butler of Hoiberg fractured the locker room even more and the Bulls went 1-6 their next seven games, falling to 27-25 heading into that season’s All-Star break, and led to Forman issuing that dreaded vote of confidence to his hand-picked coach just months into his tenure.
“Under the circumstances, Fred has done well. … [Hoiberg] has an extremely bright future here,” Forman said.
The tide did not turn for the Bulls as they finished the season 42-40 missing the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons.
Paxson and Forman took the blame for the team’s performance and declared that overhauling the roster was necessary to make the team better.
That summer of 2016, they dealt Rose, who was just the league’s MVP five years earlier to the Knicks for Robin Lopez (now with the Milwaukee Bucks), Jose Calderon and then young prospect Jerian Grant.
Moving on from Rose, whose now with the Pistons is understandable as the Chicago native was not showing the same explosion following a series of knee injuries and how he talked about wanting a new contract the previous season.
Forman said following the trade though that he wanted to reconstruct the Bulls into a “younger and more athletic” squad.
The next moves the Bulls made though was signing a then 34-year-old Wade, to a pricy two-year, $47 million deal and a then 30-year-old Rajon Rondo.
The issue with those signings was that Wade was at the end of his career, while dealing with knee issues.
Also, when the Bulls hired Hoiberg, they had plans to be a high-octane offensive squad that played up-tempo. Had players that were versatile and can spread the floor with their ability to shoot. The acquisitions of Lopez, Wade and Rondo made the Bulls a slower paced team on offense, with constant questions about their ability to make outside shots consistently.
There was also a clash of approach in leadership amongst the vets in Wade, a three-time NBA champion. Butler, one of the most competitive players in the league. And Rondo, who can be stubborn at times.
It all came to a serious boil after a 119-114 loss versus the Atlanta Hawks on Jan. 25, 2017, where they Bulls were outscored 41-31 in the fourth quarter, that dropped them to 23-24 on the season, and the veterans, who on paper did not fit from a scheme standpoint offensively not only sniped at each other. Wade and Butler also after that loss spoke about the younger players’ poor practice habits when he was not able to practice because of those aforementioned knee issues.
Wade said of his team after the loss versus the Hawks: “These games are supposed to hurt. I don’t know if that is in guys in this locker room. Hopefully, they can prove me wrong. But I will challenge them to see if losses like this hurt. … This just can’t be acceptable if you want to do something besides have an NBA jersey on and make some money. That’s all we’re doing around here.”
Butler added to that saying postgame by his locker: “Motherf—ers just got to care if we win or lose. At the end of the day, do whatever it takes to help the team win. You play your role the T. Be a star in your role, man. That’s how you win in this league.”
Rondo followed that by saying postgame: “My vets [with Celtics] would never go to the media. They would come to the team. My goal is to pass what I learned along. The young guys work. They show up. They don’t deserve blame. If anything is questionable, it’s the leadership.”
The Bulls managed to make the playoffs as the No. 8 Seed in the East by winning a tiebreaker on the final day of that regular season. But their streak of six consecutive winning seasons ended as they finished Hoiberg’s second season as head coach at 41-41.
They did put a scare into the No. 1 Seeded Boston Celtics winning the first two games of that series, but Rondo broke his thumb and the Bulls lost four straight games to fall in that opening-round series in six games. As Game 6 was winding down, the fans in the United Center chanted, “Fire Hoiberg.”
After another disappointing season, the Bulls front office remade the roster again beginning on the night of June 22, 2017 where on draft night they traded Butler to the Minnesota Timberwolves for the No. 7 overall pick Lauri Markkanen out the University of Arizona, Zach LaVine, and Kris Dunn. Rondo received $3 million as the Bulls waived him and following weeks of posturing and negotiations conceded $9 million to Wade of his $24 million salary for that season in a buyout and he took his talents to team back up with James with the Cavaliers.
“I guess being called the face of an organization isn’t as good as I thought,” Butler said in a shot at the Bulls to the Chicago Sun-Times. “We all see where being the so-called face of the Chicago Bulls got me. … You know what I’ve learned? Face of the team, eventually you’re going to see the back of his head as he’s leaving town, so no thanks.”
Paxson was singing a different tune about presenting Hoiberg with his third different roster in as many years saying at that time, “It’s an exciting day for us. We’ve defined our direction and we’re going to make decisions based on that direction from this day forward…. We made the playoffs nine out of 10 years and it wasn’t good enough. We have now reset what we’re about. … I’m not worried about perception. We understand this will take time and is a process. … Our fans, if they give us time and are patient, we’ll show them results.”
Hoiberg finally got the roster that he had always wanted to work with and yet the disfunction that clouded the Bulls the previous season followed them into the 2017-18 year, which was marked by a fight during the preseason between two key players.
On Oct. 17, 2017, now Knicks forward Bobby Portis and Nikola Mirotic got into a fight, which resulted in Mirotic suffering two broken bones in his face and a concussion where he had to be hospitalized.
“I’m wrong for what I did,” Portis said in an apology. “I want to publicly apologize to Niko. I feel like I let my fans, the Bulls organization and, most importantly, my teammates down. This is not who Bobby Portis is.”
Paxson said about the fight: “Both players owned responsibility in the incident itself. But only one player threw a punch [Ports]. And that punch connected, and for us, that is inexcusable.”
Mirotic, who was eventually traded to the New Orleans Pelicans later that season missed the Bulls first 23 games of that season, while the Bulls suspended Portis for eight games for his role in the skirmish.
“It was really hard for me. Especially because he was my teammate,” Mirotic said on Feb. 8, 2018 about the incident. “Especially the timing, the timing was basically two days before opening night and everything. After I put all that work in during the summer.”
For the Bulls, this was another situation that showed Coach Hoiberg, even though this situation had nothing personally to do with him that his voice was no longer of any value to the players.
It showed even more so on the hardwood as the team began the 2017-18 season 5-23 and finished the season 27-55, their lowest win total since winning only 33 games in the 2007-08 season.
On Dec. 3, 2018 just 24 games into last season, the Bulls put the cap on the bottle of the Hoiberg era as he was fired and replaced by current head coach Jim Boylan, then an assistant. Hoiberg complied a 115-155 record in his three-plus seasons in the “Windy City,” going just 5-19 in his final 24 games as Bulls coach.
“We were in a similar situation last year at this time…but the entire energy about this group was different back then,” Paxson said of firing Hoiberg at that moment. “We felt that here in the last several weeks, that something is different. What we’re lacking is an energy and a spirit about our team. And we need to get that back.”
Paxson also said about then interim Coach Boylen, “[Boylen] has a passion and an energy to him that I think our players will respond to. It’s different when you’re an assistant when you’re a head coach. I think he’ll be able to take his personality and get these guys to buy into what he’s doing.”
Boylen brought that old-school, get-after-it, determined mentality right from jump he took over as he held two hard practices that consisted of a lot of running and drill work.
It did no good in helping the team on the hardwood as in their third game under Boylen, the Bulls lost at home 133-77 versus the Celtics. It was the worst lost in the 54-year history of the team and tied for the largest margin of defeat in NBA history. The then Seattle Supersonics in 1986 defeated the Houston Rockets also by 56 points.
To put into perspective how bad the Bulls played on that night, the starters combined for 27 points, the fewest for a Bulls starting quintet since Nov. 10, 2007 against the Toronto Raptors. The Bulls’ reserves played the final 21 minutes and they did not have any answers against the Celtics on that night.
The Bulls did not hide their emotions after the loss as then rookie center Wendell Carter, Jr., who had three times as many losses in his first year as a pro (21) then he had in his lone season at Duke University (8) went straight into the weight room to lift.
LaVine, whose had his disgruntled moments with Coach Boylen said of the starters benching after the loss, “I felt embarrassed. I wish I was out there competing.”
He added, “That happens in the NBA sometimes. We responded in the second quarter. I don’t know. I do not know. There’s a lot of questions you could ask, but I really don’t know.”
Markkanen, who made the final go-ahead shot in the Bulls win against the Oklahoma City Thunder the night before, said without hesitation that the starters “deserve” to be benched given the poor start they had at the offensive end.
Boylen added to that disappointment by saying postgame that he was “disappointed” by the “embarrassing effort.”
“We don’t have that internal toughness yet to play at this level consistently,” he added.
He continued by saying about the mass substitutions of the starters was done to embarrass them, “I think your play is embarrassing… I worked for [San Antonio Spurs head coach] Gregg Popovich. He subbed five guys a ton of times. Nobody said a word to him about it. He felt that was the best for the team. I felt that was best for the team where we were at.”
“I wanted to give the other guys a chance to see if they could right the ship a little bit. If I don’t like the five guys out there, if I don’t like the combination, I’m going to look at a new combination. Take them all out, let them sit there and think about it.”
The cracking of the whip continued as Boylen stated that the team would practice that Sunday, which is unheard of in the NBA these days of practicing after a back-to-back.
After hearing of this, a number of the players got together and had a discussion of not showing up for practice as a form of protest.
The players did show up at the team facility where a meeting amongst the team was held to clear the air, and Coach Boylen said that he had no plans on having the team practice that Sunday.
Despite going 17-41 the final 58 games under Coach Boylen last season, he was retained and in early May 2018 on a new multiyear contract.
After they axed Hoiberg back as previously mentioned back in December and promoted Boylen from associate head coach to the Bulls’ lead man on the sidelines, they made it clear that they would likely not do a coaching search and that ownership felt that Boylen is the right teacher that this young roster needs right now and they love how he has been able to build relationships with the players, while holding their feet to the fire to get better on the court and in practice.
The basketball operations of the Chicago Bulls since 2003 has been overseen by John Paxson and Gar Forman. The team under their guidance made the playoffs in seven of those 10 seasons.
But after compiling, including this season a 154-235 record, three head coaches in the last four-plus seasons and a series of missteps in the draft and free agency, it was time for a major change at the top.
The Bulls hope that change made to Arturas Karnisovas is the one that can get them back into a playoff perennial and hopefully a championship contender again.
Karnisovas will have a young talented roster consisting of 25-year-old Zach LaVine (25.5 ppg-leads team); 22-year-old Lauri Markkanen (14.7 ppg), 20-year-old rookie Coby White (13.2 ppg); 20-year-old Wendell Carter, Jr. (11.3 ppg), Kris Dunn, Otto Porter, Jr., and Tomas Satoransky.
“Earning the enthusiasm and excitement back from the fans of the Chicago Bulls is both a challenge and something I very much look forward to,” Karnisovas said. “These fans deserve a team that they can be proud of and my objective is to get us back to relevancy.”
The biggest thing for Karnisovas is to bring in additional basketball operations personnel and to beef up the scouting department, to find talent to go alongside the aforementioned top players on the roster.
Perhaps the biggest question for the Bulls under their new leader in the front office is will current head coach Jim Boylen continue to be leader on the sidelines?
“I don’t know if Zach LaVine and Jim Boylen are on the same page. And this team is committed to Zach LaVine and Lauri Markkanen. That might speak for itself as it relates to the relationship and tenor of Jim Boylen,” ESPN’s College Basketball Analyst and former Bulls player Jay Williams said about the Bulls coaching situation.
Information statistics and quotations are courtesy of www.nba.com/news; 4/8/2020 www.espn.com story “Sources: Bulls Tab Nuggets GM Arturas Karnisovas To Lead Basketball Ops,” by Adrian Wojnarowski; 4/14/2020 3 p.m. edition “NBA: The Jump” on ESPN with Rachel Nichols, Jay Williams, and Kendrick Perkins; 4/14/2020 www.espn.com story, “Why The Chicago Bulls Cleaned House, In Their Own Words,” by Brian Windhorst and Nick Friedell; 4/14/2020 www.espn.com story, “After Bulls Shake Up Staff Off Court, Zach LaVine Set to Lead Chicago’s Charge On Court,” by Eric Woodyard; https://www.espn.com/nba/game?gameid=400828287; https://www.espn.com/nba/game?gameid=400828278; https://www.espn.com/nba/team/stats/_/name/chi; https://www.espn.com/nba/standings; and https://www.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chicago_Bulls_seasons.
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