It's been six weeks since Arturas Karnisovas addressed reporters once the Chicago Bulls season came to an end once the NBA announced the 22 teams that would take part in the restart of the 2019-20 season. Fans expected a new front-office regime would translate into Jim Boylen being removed from the helm, but if he is, he sure isn't acting like it:

“I just think we have to tell the truth. We can’t cover things up. We’ve made mistakes. Mistakes have happened. We’ve got to own up to those mistakes,” Boylen explained during a community even in his native Michigan, per Rick Tarsitano of WGN News. “It’s a difficult time. It’s raw right now and it should be. I’m just hoping we can use this moment to be better, all of us.”

That sounds like Boylen is under the impression that there's an “us” and there's no “us” without him. The Bulls finished with a 22-43 record this season and it didn't take long for the excuses to flood the mic:

“We have a young team. We were 23 and a half years-old. We had an injury-laden season. We need to play. We need to compete. We played very hard. We were a hard-playing team, but we want to keep that edge going into next year. It’s hard to do that without the competition part of it. We’re hoping we can have some of that.”

Karnisovas has been known to be thorough and he plans to survey the situation before making decisions, but Jim Boylen has never been shy about touting the organizational support he's received from ownership.

“Jerry Reinsdorf asked me to be the CEO,” Boylen told The Athletic in October. “He never said ‘coach’ to me one time. (It was) ‘Hire the right people. Get them organized. Set the course. Maintain the course. Correct the course.’ That’s what he asked me to do. I’m here to lead. The great head coaches are leaders.”

Somehow, someway, Boylen ended up as the coach, and he hasn't done it well. Zach LaVine is putting up the best numbers of his life and slowly surging as an All-Star talent. Their young pillar, Lauri Markkanen, has greatly regressed, however, due to a new initiative that rendered him as a standstill shooter, taking away other parts of his game that were still in development.

Boylen's tone-deaf statements come across like the kid that sits with everyone else at lunch, only because no one has told him to leave.

He hasn't led as he promised to do, and he hasn't brought results, which is what coaches are judged on. All he's done is give some eye roll-worthy responses after losses and weasel himself out of situations with poor explanations and a rah-rah mentality that's been long-winded in this league.

Karnisovas deserves a clean slate, but it's up to him to have one by making the tough decisions, even if Boylen can't provide a sample size for him to assess under his watch.