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The Chicago Bulls were not supposed to be contenders this season. That much is true. However, they were also supposed to show marked improvement. They haven't done that either.
In a 2019-20 campaign where the Bulls were actually expected by many to contend for a playoff spot in the weak Eastern Conference, Chicago has largely been terrible early on and looks like it has taken a step back from the second half of last year when it showed a lot of promise.
Zach LaVine has been brutal, Lauri Markkanen seems to have lost all of his confidence and Thaddeus Young has not been the key free-agent signing that the Bulls hoped he would be when they inked him over the summer.
To make matters worse, following Chicago's latest loss to the Miami Heat on Friday night, LaVine said that he didn't trust head coach Jim Boylen.
Uh, yeah. That is not good.
Boylen has been the subject of much criticism ever since he took over for Fred Hoiberg last season. This is a man who almost drove his players to a mutiny in what seemed to be just minutes after he assumed the reins as coach, and his substitution patterns have been called into question countless times.
Because the Bulls played pretty well down the stretch last season, Boylen was given a reprieve, but his horrendous coaching and player development over the first month of 2019-20 has put him right back on the hot seat. Well, in the minds of Chicago fans, anyway.
Keep in mind that I am someone who actually believes the impact of coaching is overrated, but when your players start calling you out for not being trustworthy, there's a problem there.
In my opinion, the one thing that a head coach absolutely must do is maintain control of the locker room, and Boylen has failed miserably at that.
He may very well need to go, and soon.
The Bulls are not a veteran team. They are not a group of guys who can instantly bounce back from a long period of ineptitude from the coaching staff and move on once the next guy arrives.
No; this is a young roster that is being shaped and molded by a guy who doesn't seem to have a clue of what he is doing, and it can cause irreparable harm to Chicago's rebuilding process moving forward.
With LaVine and Markkanen and supporting pieces such as Wendell Carter Jr., Chandler Hutchison and rookie Coby White, the Bulls were, at the very least, supposed to be a team on the rise.
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There is no doubt that that is a talented young core, and while Chicago certainly isn't ready to mess with the big boys, it should be putting up more of a fight right now, and it should be getting better.
Instead, LaVine's scoring and efficiency have regressed, Markkanen is shooting 36.5 percent and there has been little to no progression shown from most of the rest of the roster.
The Bulls just seem to be going through the motions, which reflects very poorly on Jim Boylen.
As a head coach, you are, at the very least, supposed to have your team ready to play night in and night out, but Chicago has looked spaced out from the opening tip.
There is no organization, no goal and, as LaVine pointed out, no trust.
LaVine's comments should be very alarming to Bulls executives John Paxson and Gar Forman, both of whom have drawn much ire from Chicago fans over the better part of the last decade.
But it finally looked like Paxson and Forman were on the right track by putting together an impressive stable of young talent that appeared to be ascending in an Eastern Conference in which 35 wins could get you a playoff berth.
So either they didn't do as fine of a job as I thought, or Boylen is basically sabotaging all of their hard work.
The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, as the head coach definitely can't shoulder all of the blame, but I also don't think that the Bulls should be this bad right now.
Markkanen in particular has been puzzling, as he was terrific over his first two seasons. This is the type of year you would expect a player to have in his sophomore year; not his third.
Is that on Markkanen? Or is that on Boylen for not putting him in a position to succeed and/or not doing enough to build trust in his young big man?
As for LaVine? Yes, we get it; he doesn't play much defense, and that is apparently a big sticking point with Boylen, but benching him and getting under his skin in the process is not the way to handle it.
Paxson and Forman need to do something now before Jim Boylen permanently damages everything they have built.
