Scott Skiles got fired because the Bulls were no longer playing the drive and kick game well, among other reasons. Are there any quality coaches available this year? Or is it going to be a year that got away? Last years Bulls were seemingly poised to advance to becoming an elite team, but this year is already slipping away.
NBA Blogger extra-ordinaire Kelly Dwyer discusses some possibilities, including these three cast-offs.
Fellow Bulls assistant Jim Boylan, meanwhile, is being interviewed by Chicago GM John Paxson to test his interests in running the team for the rest of the season. Overtures from Rick Carlisle (no, please), Larry Brown (seriously?), and Paul Westphal (anyone have a fork I can stab myself with?) have been made, but Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf is loathe to pay the salaries of two head coaches for a team that will have to win 40 of 57 games just to match last year's record.
[Click to read more of In the interim, the Bulls have a lot to think about]
Gahh! Not even mentioning fellow slow-down specialists Jeff Van Gundy and Mike Fratello, that's already a pretty sad list of options (especially Carlisle!).
Mr. Dwyer ends with a bit of optimism, albeit for the 2008-2009 season:
The Bulls can still win, mind you; assuming Myers steps aside after a few games and Boylan takes over. There are a dozen sound assistant coaches (I'm a fan of San Antonio assistant Mike Budenholzer, and Dallas' Mario Elie would be an intriguing hire) out there that should be ready to turn this Chicago team around next summer, but it's nigh-on-impossible to hire those sorts of talents away from their respective teams in the middle of a season.
Carlisle, Brown and Westphal have won in the past; but the first two offer a slowed-down attack that doesn't really benefit Chicago's small roster and jump-shooting guards, and the latter was more or less being ignored (and not in the typical, "players tuned out the coach"-sense) by his last two teams toward the end. A team as talented and malleable as these Bulls remains a head coach's wet dream, which is all the more reason Paxson needs to make the right move this week, and next summer.
The answer, for now, has to come from within. The answers behind winning with this team, to me at least, seem obvious. Here's hoping Chicago's next coach doesn't follow Skiles' line of unpredictable orthodoxy, because this is a young team that still has an outstanding chance to be great.
Maybe this was simulated blood on Kirk Hinrich's billboard after all.
