NBA Sunday: Are the Bulls Going to Regress?

The last time the Chicago Bulls hired a head coach from Iowa State University, he posted a cumulative win-loss record of 49-190 and resigned 25 games into the 2001-02 NBA season.

In the end, all Tim Floyd will be remembered for from his time as the head coach of the Bulls was being put in the unenviable predicament of having to succeed Phil Jackson and his six championships and for delivering a memorable quote at his 1998 press conference.

Including interim coaches, Fred Hoiberg will be the ninth coach to man the sideline for the Bulls since Floyd’s resignation back on December 21, 2001. And like Floyd, Hoiberg is leaving Iowa State for the unenviable job of succeeding a very talented head coach.

Will Hoiberg succeed? Or, like Floyd as an NBA head coach, will he fall flat on his face?

Here is at least one instance in which the Bulls hope that history does not repeat itself.

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This past NBA season, the Golden State Warriors bucked a few trends and taught us a few things. In a way, the team’s playing style and offensive attitude validated Mike D’Antoni and his free-flowing, pick-and-pass, stop-and-pop, gun-slinging offensive system. In Steve Kerr’s offense, there were remnants of some of his influencers. Backdoor cuts and off-ball movement were essential to the success of his Warriors and his playing under Jackson for five years in a triangle offense had a profound impact on the offensive principles to which Kerr subscribed.

Allowing a ball-dominant small guard to quarterback the offense and encouraging the three-point shot—those are but a few of the characteristics that Kerr borrowed from D’Antoni, as his Warriors would average 10.77 three-point makes per game. That number is the third highest team average since the NBA introduced the three-point shot back in the 1979-80 season.

There happens to be one other legendary coach with which Kerr now has something in common—Pat Riley.

In leading his Warriors to the 2015 NBA Championship, Kerr became the first rookie head coach to accomplish the game’s ultimate feat since Riley did the same for the Los Angeles Lakers back in 1982. Unlike Kerr, Riley had served as an assistant coach for the two years immediately preceding his being named the successor to Paul Westhead. And unlike Kerr, Riley took over a team that was only one year removed from winning a championship in 1980.

That Kerr led the young, relatively inexperienced Warriors to the championship and that he did so without having any prior coaching experience makes his accomplishment a little more impressive.

So as Hoiberg assumed the mantle in Chicago, he can look at the example set by Kerr and even David Blatt of the Cleveland Cavaliers and rest assured that prior success as a coach on the NBA level is not a prerequisite for championship contention.

But when you look around, it is not difficult to imagine the Bulls taking a step back this coming season, especially as the team presumably begins the process of forging a new identity.

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Over the course of his five years as the head coach of the Bulls, Tom Thibodeau posted a cumulative win-loss record of 255-139. His biggest accomplishment, though, is the identity that his teams forged with their tough-nosed approach and take-no-prisoners play. Despite a deteriorating relationship with the front office and a plethora of injury-related issues over the years, Thibodeau always came to work first, was always the last to leave and simply refused to accept any excuses from anyone.

A current member of the Bulls who played under Thibodeau once told me that the trick to Thibodeau and his success was twofold. The first and most important thing he did was lead by example. Thibodeau routinely spent 12-plus hours in his office at the training facility and spent late nights on the road reviewing film in his hotel room and preparing for team meetings while most of his peers would have been asleep after giving such assignments to their lead assistant.

He epitomized “hard work” and it showed.

Second, to his credit, Thibodeau also made a habit of treating every single player the same. Carlos Boozer spent a number of fourth quarters glued to the bench because he was a less capable defender than, say, Taj Gibson, and that was only one example. The game was always to be played Thibodeau’s way, and those who couldn’t pull their weight rode the pine. Period.

The same standard applied to everyone, and Thibodeau’s winning over of Luol Deng, Joakim Noah and Derrick Rose went a long way toward helping him establish a winning culture after succeeding Vinny Del Negro.

I have been around the NBA long enough to know that the right coach, in the right situation and with the right personnel can make all of the difference in the world. Along with the aforementioned three, Jimmy Butler and Gibson are both Thibodeau players.

And now, the very fair question to ask is whether Hoiberg will be able to garner the same respect from the players who grew into household names under Thibodeau. It is also fair to question whether the major expectation of Hoiberg—that is, to turn the Bulls into a more potent offensive team—is something that may have adverse implications on the team that the Bulls have become.

Obviously, the major risk involved with hiring a first-time head coach is that there is no sample size. What are reasonable expectations? How much patience is too much? Too little? We simply do not know. All we know at this point is that, like Tim Floyd, Hoiberg finds himself in the unenviable predicament of succeeding an all-around star of a coach.

Fortunately for him, though, we know that Kerr was in the same exact predicament one year ago and he seemed to do alright for himself.

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The simple truth of the matter is this: although Derrick Rose had a productive season last year, he is still attempting to revert into the player he was during the 2010-11 season, when he became the young Most Valuable Player in league history. Four full seasons have past since then, and usually, in the NBA, if you are still searching for something four years after it was lost, it should be presumed dead.

The manner in which the Bulls were eliminated from the playoffs by the Kevin Love-less Cavaliers last spring certainly raised some questions. There are some within the Bulls organization who are proponents of blowing the current cast up and building around Rose, Butler and Nikola Mirotic. The idea may sound absurd until one realizes that both Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson are 30 years old and especially in the case of Noah, are not getting any younger or healthier.

One need to only take a cursory glance around the Eastern Conference and see that the Toronto Raptors (who added DeMare Carroll), the Milwaukee Bucks (who added Greg Monroe), the Indiana Pacers (who have added Monta Ellis) and even the Washington Wizards (who have recovered nicely from Paul Pierce’s departure) will all be stronger this season.

Some would consider the Miami HEAT, now healthy and with new additions Justise Winslow and Amar’e Stoudemire, as a dark-horse contender in the Eastern Conference.

For quite a few reasons, fair or not, the Bulls will expect Hoiberg to continue their status as a contender. Some will expect him to fortify the few weaknesses in Thibodeau’s approach. Reasonable or not, with the conference around him getting tougher, personnel that seems to match Thibodeau’s demeanor, the aging of his core and Hoiberg’s lack of experience as a head coach, I would not be surprised to see the Bulls take a step back this coming season.

It didn’t take Tim Floyd too long to realize that he was in over his head. He resigned after four years in Chicago, and just over three years later, when he assumed the mantle as the head coach of the USC Trojans, with regard to being an NBA head coach, Floyd admitted, “I wasn’t very good at it.”

Traditionally, college coaches have not fared well on the NBA level. Those concerns probably have something to do with Mike Kyzyzewski turning down overtures from NBA teams, including the Los Angeles Lakers (twice). Still, there is always an exception to the rule, and today, Brad Stevens of the Boston Celtics seems poised to be one such exception.

For Hoiberg, the journey is just beginning. He could end up as just another Tim Floyd or perhaps be the next Steve Kerr.

At this point, it’s all on the table, but in the immediate future, it certainly should not strike anyone as surprising if the Bulls, at least in the immediate future, take a step back.