Billy Donovan is proving to be the right coach for the Chicago Bulls

Higher winning percentage

Through 34 regular season games, the Bulls have won three more games this season compared to last year. While a three-game improvement is worth taking note of, it’s even more impressive when put into context.

Chicago started the season by losing their first three games. Excluding those three contests, they’ve actually been a better than .500 ballclub this season. It’s also worth noting that Lauri Markkanen has missed a considerable portion of the season due to injury.

Luckily for Bulls fans, he’s expected to return to the lineup when the team resumes play on Thursday. Without their second-best player, Chicago has still been able to have the ninth-best record in the Eastern Conference. If the regular season were over today, the Bulls would be a part of the play-in tournament to determine the seventh and eighth seeds in the Eastern Conference.

In his first season in the Windy City, Billy Donovan has helped the team’s young talent flourish while also showing them how to win games. For the first time in four seasons, the team has a legitimate shot at the playoffs. Bulls fans fondly remember the early 2010’s when the team routinely had one of the league’s best records and a deep playoff run was an annual expectation. While projections for this team shouldn’t be quite as lofty as years past, things are slowly moving in the right direction in Chicago.

With Donovan at the helm, the team will continue to get better with each passing season. Soon playoff appearances will no longer be a hope, they’ll once again become an expectation.