The Chicago Bulls cleaned out their front office on Monday by firing top basketball executives Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley. Now, they begin the process of replacing them. The job holds real appeal. The Bulls could have two first-round picks in this year’s draft. They’ll have max cap space this offseason, they play in the NBA’s third-biggest market, and of course, they come with all of the history Michael Jordan made for them in the 1990s. On paper, it’s the sort of gig that should be able to attract top front office talent. There’s just one hangup: the Bulls seem to have their heart set on retaining head coach Billy Donovan.”If I interview someone and they’re not sold on Billy, they’re not sold on a Hall of Fame coach,” Bulls CEO Michael Reinsdorf said during a video call Tuesday, “they’re not sold on a person who’s won championships in college, who’s gone deep in the playoffs with Oklahoma City. … If Billy wants to be our coach and someone’s not interested in that, then they’re probably not the right candidate for us.”Though it hasn’t come with such public support from ownership, something similar appears to be happening in Dallas. The Mavericks are seeking a full-time replacement for Nico Harrison, and they’re even seemingly planning to go big-game hunting for proven, winning general managers in that effort. But according to Marc Stein, they’d also like whoever they hire to keep Jason Kidd as their head coach.This has left fans of both teams feeling somewhat uneasy with their searches. Wouldn’t the best executives want to hire their own coach? Are the Bulls and Mavericks therefore limiting the pool of interested general managers by trying to handcuff them to an existing coach? Can an organization really be aligned when a head coach and general manager were hired by different people?
The theoretical answers to these questions are “yes,” “probably” and “usually not,” but why limit ourselves to conventional wisdom? Let’s look at NBA history and try to figure out whether or not teams tend to be more successful when general managers hire their own coaches or when they inherit them.
Bulls vs. Mavericks: Which open front office job is better? The choice involves more than just Cooper Flagg
Jasmyn Wimbish
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2026-04-08 22:21:38
