The Chicago Bulls have fired head coach Fred Hoiberg, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania. The fourth-year head coach had a 5-19 record this season, and finishes his tenure 115-155, with one postseason appearance that ended with a first-round exit.
The Bulls fired Fred Hoiberg and still have no clear direction
Chicago hasn’t been healthy all season, and just games away from getting near full strength, it’s dumped its head coach.
Photo by Tim Bradbury/Getty Images
Associate head coach Jim Boylen will take over Hoiberg’s role permanently until the end of the season, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. There’s no interim label, meaning there is no coaching search yet.
This firing comes as a bit of a surprise, especially as Hoiberg hasn’t had his full roster all season. The team’s prized prospect, Lauri Markkanen, also just returned to play his first game of the year.
So why did Chicago fire Hoiberg?
The timing suggests that the Bulls front office already made up its mind that Hoiberg wasn’t their coach for the future. It seems they want to test the waters on Boylen, who gets the return of Markkanen, and could also see Kris Dunn and Bobby Portis soon. Those two haven’t played since October.
If Chicago wanted to give Hoiberg a fair chance with this core, it would’ve let him coach a full roster.
Hoiberg was set up to fail this season, and the ones before
The Bulls couldn’t have predicted the aforementioned injuries, or Denzel Valentine’s, but Chicago doesn’t have a winning roster. This summer, the team inked its two biggest deals in one-way scorers with no interest in defense: Zach LaVine and Jabari Parker. (Parker has literally told us this.) The rest of the roster is filled out by former two-way contracts, low draft picks, role players, and Robin Lopez.
There’s promise in what rookie Wendell Carter can be, but in terms on win-now players, Chicago has few. Any expectations to compete were too many for this roster, as has been the case since the beginning of Hoiberg’s tenure.
He and then-star Jimmy Butler, who incited the coach to do his job with more expression and by different tactics, didn’t get along. Hoiberg also had to coach around the bizarre Dwyane Wade-Rajon-Rondo-Butler pairing, and feuds. Nothing easy was ever handed to him.
So what now?
The Bulls persist somewhere between tanking and mediocrity, but maybe they find an upgrade at the head coaching position. Boylen has worked as an assistant coach in the NBA for more than two decades, and went 69-60 in four seasons as the head coach of Division 1 Utah.
His experience is there, and now he’s getting an opportunity. Though he’s dealt with the same lackluster, albeit healthier, Bulls roster.
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