Bulls coaching options.

May 16, 2008   ·   Paul Raymond   ·   Jump to comments

After being turned down by Mike D’Antoni the Chicago Bulls have had to look elsewhere for a head coach. Their main option has been Avery Johnson, whom has said numerous times he plans on taking some time off. Johnson reiterated this again on Dan Patrick’s radio show Thursday that taking time off is definitely in the cards, but did admit to talking with the Bulls. Since Patrick’s show on Thursday, the Bulls have decided to look elsewhere. So with Avery Johnson now out of the picture, where do the Bulls go?

The Chicago Sun-Times lists a few options the Bulls may consider. They include, Tyrone Corbin of the Utah Jazz, Tom Thibodeau of the Boston Celtics, Michael Curry of the Detroit Pistons and Brian Shaw of the Los Angeles Lakers. One of them Tyrone Corbin has already been scheduled for an interview. Personally, I feel that out of those guys only 2 are really viable options. They are Corbin and Thibodeau. Let’s look at both guys.

Tyrone Corbin - Utah Jazz. First, Corbin is a fairly local guy after playing his college ball at DePaul. Corbin played for 15 seasons in the NBA, and has now coached for 4, this was his 3rd season as an assistant coach on Jerry Sloan’s staff. Corbin has been noted as an up-and-coming coach, but not quite yet on the hot assistants list. ”I’d love to be a head coach in this league someday,” he said. ”I’m just going to continue with this team and see where it takes me.”

Currently, Corbin has been given some responsibilities of preparing scouting reports for certain teams. But his main role with the team is to work with the Utah big man, which would be very beneficial to the Bulls. With youngsters Joakim Noah, Aaron Gray, Andres Nocioni and Tyrus Thomas the team could really use a coach who has considerable experience playing in the post, something Corbin has.

Tom Thibodeau - Boston Celtics. This guy is a defensive wizard. And a defensive mindset is something this young team needs. The Bulls ranked 16th in the NBA this past season in points allowed, giving up just over 100 a game. Team’s with Thibodeau as an assistant coach have finished in the Top 10 defensively in 14 of his 17 seasons as a coach. This past year was his first with the Celtics, and the team improved considerably. The Celtics finished 2nd in team defense after being 18th the previous year, and gave up 9 less points per game. True, they added some pretty big pieces to the roster, but the coaches mindset and game plans also come in to play. The Bulls can score and as the youngsters get better their totals will go up, if they can get anything resembling a defense they could be a force in the Eastern Conference.

Both coaches have the most pluses in my eyes. But then again, I’m not a big fan of the NBA, so what do I know! If one of the these two coaches do get the job thou, they’ll have plenty of young guns to work with.

If anyone’s wondering why Avery Johnson wants to take a year off the answer is pretty simple. He had 3 years left on his contract with the Dallas Mavericks. So essentially he can sit back beach side for the next 3 years and Mark Cuban would be forced to still pay him $12 million.

Feel free to follow us on TWITTER and/or subscribe to our RSS feed.