Billy Donovan of the Chicago Bulls removed four assistant coaches a month after hiring them.
Chicago On Monday, assistants Karen Stack Umlauf, Dean Cooper, Nate Loenser, and Roy Rogers were let go by new Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan.
Umlauf, a talented player for Northwestern in the early 1980s, signed up with the Bulls in 1985 as a ticket salesperson at the entry level. Soon after, she was moved to the basketball operations department by Hall of Fame general manager Jerry Krause. As associate coach for the 2018 Summer League, she became Chicago’s first female assistant.
It was Loenser’s third season as a Bull. Rogers was in his first and Cooper in his second.
The Chicago White Sox, chairman Jerry Reinsdorf’s second franchise, broke with manager Rick Renteria and longtime pitching coach Don Cooper on the same day that the moves were made.
Last month, Arturas Karnisovas, the new executive vice president of basketball operations, hired Donovan, one of the best coaching prospects available. After Jim Boylen was sacked, Donovan took over.
Over the previous five seasons, Donovan guided Oklahoma City to a 243-157 record and guaranteed a postseason berth each time.
He won two NCAA titles in his 19 seasons as a coach at the University of Florida before to joining the Thunder.
Following Jacque Vaughn’s dismissal, the Brooklyn Nets encounter a well-known obstacle.
Approximately a year after ending his turbulent three and a half-year stay with the Brooklyn Nets, Kyrie Irving made a comeback to Barclays Center.
On February 6, less than a week had passed since Kevin Durant, Irving’s former running partner for the Nets, returned to the city where they had shared dreams of winning NBA titles. Irving was in town with the Dallas Mavericks. Rather, a club contending for a play-in spot in the Eastern Conference had taken the place of one that fell short of championship expectations.
It’s going to look different when you trade certain franchise players and things are mixed around, Irving remarked following the Mavericks’ 119-107 victory in the second meeting of Dallas’ current seven-game winning run. The sensation will be altered.
On this court, you have some of the world’s greatest players competing. However, the pressure has changed and it’s now time to start over.
Rather than becoming an NBA superteam with James Harden, Irving, and Durant, Brooklyn is more like what Sean Marks took over as general manager of the team in February 2016.
Then, Brooklyn lost possession of its next three first-round draft picks and was on the verge of missing the playoffs. The team for this season seems set for the same end.
With fewer than two months left in the regular season, the Nets are 21-34, 11th in the conference. Additionally, they lose control of their next four first-round picks even with the draft picks they acquired in the Irving and Durant trades.
Marks fired Jacque Vaughn on Monday, the eighth anniversary of his hire, marking the third time in his general manager career that he has done so.
The team’s collapse over the previous two months culminated in a 50-point loss to the Boston Celtics right before the All-Star break.
When speaking about his choice to move on from Vaughn earlier this week, Marks remarked, “It’s about the level of compete.
We are not going to be the league’s most talented team. I’m not a moron. I am fully aware of that. However, these young men are talented in their own right.
These are the kinds of things one should anticipate when one finds themselves in our current situation—where one is clinging and struggling to obtain whatever it is that one desires. I would like to see it during the course of the next 28 games.
And to be very honest, those are probably some things I haven’t seen.
Under interim coach Kevin Ollie, Brooklyn expects to see these kinds of changes, though the team’s recent troubles haven’t been helped by Thursday’s crushing defeat in his debut.
Even if the Nets come back to claim the final play-in position in the East, Brooklyn is still depending on its future rather than its present to win, just like it was under Marks’ leadership.
