Candidates to replace Jim Boylen as Chicago Bulls head coach
2. David Fizdale
Before being a head coach, David Fizdale had a spotless resume. He was an assistant coach with the Miami Heat in the Big 3 era, and it’s hard to find a better place to grow than that.
Unfortunately, after moving into the top job, he has become a fall man for both the Memphis Grizzlies and the New York Knicks. Fizdale was the in-between coach of the Grit and Grind era to the Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr era, leaving him to try to keep Marc Gasol and Mike Conley competitive as the roster fell apart around them.
The Knicks are a whole other situation, a young team whose only veterans are a group of power forwards with Marcus Morris calling isolations every third position must be a difficult spot to coach.
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What we can take from those two situations is that Fizdale is a player’s coach, winning champions with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade while the backbone of the Heat’s culture has been integrated into Fizdale’s coaching style.
Given a team with an actual clear direction and a team with without half a dozen power forwards, Fizdale could be the perfect development coach to teach this lottery team how to fight like a playoff team.
The Bulls are in need of leadership, mentoring and organization on and off the court, and Fizdale can do that. The Bulls player have shown discontent and a lack of faith in Boylen, but there is no such worry for Fizdale’s reputation around the league as players around the NBA all publicly showed dismay with his firing in Memphis in 2017
As for the Bulls, Fizdale is available and ready to coach again and he could be a great coach for this young core to build to the next stage of development.