Chicago Bulls: 3 takeaways from Fred Hoiberg firing

2. Front office has to take some of the blame

Before Hoiberg’s arrival in the Windy City, the Bulls had a pretty decent coach by the name of Tom Thibodeau. Although he had no prior experience as a head coach, he had served as an assistant coach for multiple teams and his defensive philosophies played an instrumental role in the Boston Celtics’ title run back in 2008.

Under the previous coaching regime, Chicago won 64.7 percent of its games in five seasons. Not only that, they were one of the better defensive teams in the league even though their MVP (Derrick Rose) missed a significant amount of time during that span due to multiple season-ending knee surgeries.

Instead of owning up to the fact that they failed to produce a roster that could legitimately compete for a championship when Rose went down, the blame fell on the head coach. In their opinion, a new voice was needed to help the team reach its fullest potential.

After a very short search, they settled on Hoiberg, who had made a name for himself during a five-year run with Iowa State in which his teams won 67.3 percent their games. Heralded as an offensive guru, this was supposed to be the guy that was going to help take the team to a new level. In other words, he was going to succeed where Thibodeau had supposedly failed.

Sadly, that vision was not fulfilled and as was the case with Vinny Del Negro and Thibs, the Bulls are firing a head coach who has at least one more year left on his contract. Based on the win-loss record (115-155), Hoiberg failed to live up to expectations.

At the same time, if the coach is the primary reason for the team not playing with a high level of energy and effort on a nightly basis, the front office must also take some of the blame for the team’s shortcomings because they selected those individuals in the first place.