Billy Donovan shared Coach of the Year honors, as voted by his peers in the National Basketball Coaches Association, by virtue of his helping the Oklahoma City Thunder to an unexpected playoff berth this season. Can he repeat that feat with the Chicago Bulls in 2020-21?
On Tuesday, the Bulls announced that Donovan -- who mutually agreed with the Thunder not to return after his contract expired -- will be their next head coach. Chicago has spent three years in the lottery and finished seven games back of the Orlando Magic in the race for eighth in the East this season.
What will Donovan have to improve to get the Bulls back to the playoffs? How realistic is that? Let's take a look.
Chicago's defense likely more conservative
In terms of X's and O's, the most notable aspect of Donovan's Chicago predecessor, Jim Boylen, was his use of an unorthodox, trap-heavy defensive scheme. Per Second Spectrum tracking, Chicago blitzed more pick-and-rolls with a second defender than the next four teams combined before play stopped during the 2019-20 regular season.
In fact, the 1,353 blitzes used by the Bulls were more than Donovan's Oklahoma City teams employed in his entire five-season run (1,333, sixth in the league in that span, per Second Spectrum). By last season, Donovan's pick-and-roll defense was much more conservative, as the Thunder ranked in the NBA's bottom 10 in blitzing.
Instead, Donovan has typically put more focus on preventing 3-pointers. Oklahoma City allowed fewer 3s as a percentage of all shot attempts than the average team in four of Donovan's five seasons -- something Chicago hasn't managed since 2016-17, the last time the Bulls made the playoffs.
To Boylen's credit, his strategy mostly worked. Chicago's defensive rating (107.7 points per 100 possessions) was slightly better than league average (108.1) because the team led the league in forcing turnovers by a wide margin. The difference between the Bulls' opponent turnover rate (16.3% of plays) and that of the next-highest team (Toronto, at 14.6%) was nearly as large as the difference between the Raptors' mark and league average (12.8%). Only one non-playoff team (the Memphis Grizzlies, who lost the play-in matchup) had a better defensive rating than the Bulls.
Although there's still room for improvement on defense, when it comes to how he affects winning and losing, Donovan's impact is more likely to be felt at the offensive end of the court.
Player development key for Donovan
It seems certain that new Chicago executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas (who was hired in April) valued Donovan in large part because of his track record in player development, which stood out this season. Although the Thunder featured veteran starters Chris Paul, Danilo Gallinari and Steven Adams, three of the team's top seven players in postseason minutes were in their first or second seasons: starting wings Luguentz Dort and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and backup forward Darius Bazley.
For the Bulls to be more competitive next season, the young talent already on the roster will have to take a step forward. That begins with recent lottery picks Wendell Carter Jr. and Lauri Markkanen, Chicago's starting frontcourt duo.
Since announcing his presence with a strong rookie season at age 20, Markkanen has seen his game stagnate. His efficiency has barely ticked up, and after playing a larger role in the offense in Year 2, Markkanen's 2019-20 usage rate of 21% was the lowest of his career. He also saw his defensive rebounding numbers suffer because of the departure of center Robin Lopez, who excelled at boxing out opponents while Markkanen secured the rebound.
Carter progressed as a rebounder and scored more efficiently in his second season, yet his advanced value statistics ticked downward because he blocked fewer shots and played a smaller role in the offense, with a 16% usage rate. Carter's mobility on the perimeter was crucial to executing Boylen's defensive scheme, but in an era in which productive centers have never been so easy to find, it's not yet clear that justified using a high lottery pick on one.
As important as players' development in the long run is how 2019 lottery pick Coby White evolves. Playing almost exclusively off the bench as a rookie (he made his first career start in the last game Chicago played), White was an unrepentant gunner, attempting 8.1 3-pointers per 36 minutes, the second-highest mark for a rookie with at least 1,000 minutes played, behind that of Alex Abrines in 2016-17 under Donovan, per Basketball-Reference.com.
Given that style, White's value fluctuated wildly based on whether those 3s went in. In the 23 games in which he made at least 40% of his 3s, he averaged a 12.7 game score, according to Basketball-Reference. When White hit 30% of his 3s or less, a 34-game sample, the average game score dropped to 5.2.
Before play stopped, there were more makes than usual. In the Bulls' final nine games, White shot 43% from 3, fueling an average of 26.1 points per game in that stretch, which included three consecutive games with 30-plus points. Building on that finish to the season will be key for White, an All-Rookie Second Team pick.
Outline of a competitive team with good health
One thing Donovan would love to bring with him to Chicago is the kind of health the Thunder enjoyed last season. Despite relying heavily on a pair of players with lengthy injury track records in Gallinari and Paul, Oklahoma City's top five players by minutes per game (Gilgeous-Alexander, Paul, Gallinari, Adams and Sixth Man Award runner-up Dennis Schroder) missed a combined 18 games before play stopped.
By contrast, the Bulls saw three starters (Carter, Markkanen and veteran small forward Otto Porter Jr.) miss at least 15 games each. Porter missed 51 games because of a left foot injury. His health is key to Chicago's chances at a playoff run in 2020-21. According to NBA Advanced Stats, Chicago outscored opponents by 0.7 points per 100 possessions when Porter played with leading scorer Zach LaVine last season and had an even better plus-4.5 net rating with both LaVine and Porter in 2018-19 after the latter was acquired at the trade deadline.
If Porter stays healthy, the Bulls have the makings of a competitive team. Chicago's depth of backcourt talent matches up well with how the Thunder played last season. Donovan's best lineups featured three guards (Gilgeous-Alexander, Paul and Schroder) with the versatility to defend bigger opponents, similar to Bulls guards Tomas Satoransky and Kris Dunn.
That isn't to say that these two teams are the same. In particular, Chicago can't match the sure-handed ballhandling and veteran leadership offered by Paul, a future Hall of Famer the likes of which isn't on the Bulls' roster. Even adding the eight extra seeding games Oklahoma City played during the restart, the Thunder had fewer turnovers this season than the Bulls, who ranked 25th in offensive turnover rate.
Chicago will have a lot of ground to make up in the race for eighth, and it has to battle the other teams currently in the lottery, including the Washington Wizards, who finished with a better record and will add point guard John Wall to the mix after he missed the entire 2019-20 campaign. The odds are still against the Bulls returning to the playoffs with Donovan at the helm.