The past few years have not been good for the Chicago Bulls, to put it bluntly. After being eliminated in the first round of the 2016 NBA Playoffs, they rebuilt the franchise from the ground up. They started by trading their star player, Jimmy Butler, to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Butler was traded for three players who were supposed to be the cornerstones of their rebuild: Zach LaVine, Lauri Markkanen, and Kris Dunn. The 2017-18 season was the first year of the rebuild, and as most first rebuild seasons go, it did not go well. Chicago lost 55 games while only winning 25 of them. However, there were glimpses of talent on the team. Lauri Markannen emerged as one of Chicago’s best shooters, while Zach LaVine impressed in the few games he played. The 2018-19 season started well, as Chicago’s first round draft pick Wendell Carter Jr. left a good impression in his first few games. However, it started to fall apart in early December 2018.
That was when the Bulls fired head coach Fred Hoiberg and replaced him with assistant coach Jim Boylen. The move was widely panned by fans and even some players, who slowly started to distrust Boylen. Not even four weeks after Boylen was hired, the locker room was already beginning to rebel against him, mostly due to Boylen’s grueling practices. In February, the issue supposedly resolved itself, but Boylen never fully regained locker room trust. Additionally, all of this drama hurt the Bulls on the court too, as they went 22-60 on the season, a worse record than their first rebuilding year. Going into the 2019-20 season, Chicago went in with some hopes, but many fans thought nothing would change unless Boylen got fired.
To say the 2019-20 season was worse than the 2018-19 season would be an understatement. Boylen lost the locker room multiple times and was on the verge of a full-blown mutiny by the end of November 2019. Chicago did not play that well either, going 22-43 before the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the remainder of their season. During the break-in play, Chicago made some wholesale changes. They started by firing their general manager/president of basketball operations, Gar Forman. After hiring Artūras Karnišovas as their new president of basketball operations, the Bulls finally fired Jim Boylen. They replaced him with Billy Donovan, who had years of coaching experience in the NBA and college basketball. With an entirely new front office and a new head coach, the Bulls appear to be in an excellent position to make some noise in the 2020-21 season. They already have the talent, and they have a high first round draft pick in the NBA Draft this offseason. If Chicago drafts a good player, they can make the playoffs and maybe bring this long rebuild to a close. It looked like nothing was going Chicago’s way, but now there is finally some hope for one of Chicago’s most successful sports teams.