If Chicago Bulls' NBA season is finished Thursday, likely so is tenure of Coach Jim Boylen
The 2019-20 NBA season is expected to officially end for eight teams on Thursday, including the Chicago Bulls.
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On Thursday, the NBA's board of governors is expected to formally approve either a 20- or 22-team restart to the season starting in late July at Disney World in Orlando. The format, which most likely will be 22 teams, would include regular-season and play-in games to compete for playoff berths in both conferences.
Only the 16 teams currently in the playoff field and the six that are within six games of a playoff spot would go to Orlando. New Orleans, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento and San Antonio in the West and Washington in the East would qualify from that latter scenario.
Thus, that would mean the season is over for eight teams, and when that's official for the Chicago Bulls expect head coach Jim Boylen to be quickly fired. Ownership already has overhauled the front office, dumping the John Paxson-Gar Forman regime. Ex-Denver Nuggets GM Arturas Karnisovas has replaced Paxson as the VP of basketball operations and former Philadelphia 76ers senior vice president of player personnel Marc Eversley supplanted Forman as the GM.
There's a less-than-zero chance that duo keeps Boylen, who is 39-84 in his two seasons. Chicago was one of those "chic" teams expected to take a leap into playoff contention this season but finished 22-43 (29-35-1 against the spread) with young players such as Lauri Markkanen regressing. Several players were critical of Boylen, who often called timeouts at very puzzling times.
While Karnisovas and Eversley may interview a handful of candidates, the clear-cut favorite to take over as coach is former Bulls player and assistant Adrian Griffin. He has never been a head coach in the NBA but is very respected around the league and has spent the past two seasons as Nick Nurse's lead assistant with the Toronto Raptors. Of course, the Dinos are defending NBA champions and would be in the 22-team restart field so Griffin would have wait to be officially hired.
Griffin was also Karnisovas' college teammate at Seton Hall. Griffin is considered a defensive-minded coach as teams he has been an assistant on have ranked in the Top 5 in defensive rating six different seasons – including the Raptors in 2019-20 despite losing defensive stopper Kawhi Leonard in free agency.
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