The hiring of Arturas Karnisovas as the Chicago Bulls new vice president of basketball operations brought many hopes, among them a new regime in the sidelines. According to Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times, the Jim Boylen era has already come to a close, with the decision “all but made” by this new brass.

Cowley spoke as a guest of The Dan Bernstein Show on 670 The Score Radio:

“Here's what's going on behind the scenes from people I've talked to and sources I've talked to — they're ready to move on from Jim Boylen,” Cowley said on 670 The Score. “Now, the thing in this is timing and how to do this.”

Cowley; a longtime Bulls beat writer, argued that Boylen's best-case scenario is a play-in tournament that reverses his fate by impressing the new brass. Logistically, however, that is far from feasible.

While the NBA previously pitched a 70-game season that would give all teams a chance to finalize their 2019-20 season, talks have recently moved to reduce the number of teams heading to Orlando.

As it is, Boylen hasn't done enough to warrant staying for another season in his year-and-a-half term at the helm of this team. His old-school style of hard-nosed practices, perplexing timing of timeouts, and shocking lack of accountability for some of his shortcomings have quickly run him out of favor in The Windy City.

“So what you have with this front office is they have to say, ‘We've talked to the players. We've publicly come out and said the two things that are most important to us are players first and winning,'” said Cowley. “Jim Boylen doesn't check either of those boxes. He just doesn't, fair or unfair. He's throwing his job on, ‘Well, I did what was asked of me. I established an identity. They wanted a defensive identity, and I did that.'

“From the people I talk to, the decision is all but made. This is just (Bulls management) trying to say, ‘We gave him the fairest look, as small as the sample size was, we watched how he interacted with the players. We watched how he coached, if it is five games or 15 games or however the format is going to be and we just don't think it's good enough. And we respect that Michael Reinsdorf and Jerry Reinsdorf and John Paxson like this guy, but we're going to go ahead and move on from him.' That's the ideal situation for how they want this handled. It's just a matter of tact right now. The decision is made. It's just a matter of tact and we are giving every department a fair shake and everybody a fair chance if their contract wasn't up (yet).”

As Cowley tells it, the writing is on the wall, it's just a matter of Karnisovas and his new front office team to work under protocol and do things properly before giving Boylen the proverbial ax.