Billy Donovan steps away as Bulls head coach

The Billy Donovan era has officially come to an end for the Chicago Bulls.

“After a series of thoughtful and extensive discussions with ownership regarding the future of the organization, I have decided to step away as the head coach of the Chicago Bulls, to allow the search process to unfold. I believe it is in the best interest of the Bulls, to allow the new leader to build out the staff as they see fit,” Donovan said in a press release.

After taking some time to consider his future, it was important to Donovan to allow the organization to have a clean slate, and to let this new lead decision maker bring in his own people.

“While we clearly wanted Billy to return as our head coach, we had open dialogue about the importance of respecting the process of bringing in new Basketball Operations leadership,” team president and CEO Michael Reinsdorf said in the press release. “Together, we mutually agreed that giving that person the freedom to shape the organization was the best approach for everyone involved. We are grateful for everything he has given to this team and wish Billy and his family all the best.”

In six years at the helm, Donovan went 226-256 during the regular season, 2-3 in the Play-In Tournament and 1-4 in his one Playoff appearance.

Though those results weren’t what anyone hoped for, Donovan was far from the primary culprit. Even still, he decides to move on to greener pastures and will no doubt have a variety of options available to him, including taking some time off.

Donovan went through a tremendous amount of personal tragedy during the 2025-26 season, on top of the emotional challenges of adjusting to the roster overhaul. It was well documented that he planned to meet with Reinsdorf following the season to determine his future.

Reinsdorf made it clear during his Zoom media availability that he wanted Donovan to stay, even going so far as to allude to the idea that keeping him was going to be a requirement for any new hire at the top of basketball operations:

“If someone’s not interested in Billy as our coach, and Billy wants to be our coach, then they’re probably not the right candidate for us.”

While he did walk that back in a follow-up interview with The Athletic, it was clear that the organization’s strong preference was to keep him as the head coach. Donovan’s future was in his own hands.

Over recent weeks, Donovan had repeatedly expressed a strong sense of loyalty and admiration for the Reinsdorfs. Chicago is home and any decision he made would not be determined by other coaching jobs. But the reality of the situation is that the Bulls are at a crossroads, and Donovan had to decide if he still wanted to be a part of that.

“I love being in Chicago, and I love the organization, everything about it,” Donovan told reporters ahead of the season finale in Dallas. “But we’re at this pivot point right now where everything’s changed. So for me to have to sit down have a conversation, that’s really what I want to do, just to find out where we’re all at on this and how we’re going to move forward.”

It was always going to be challenging to make a decision purely based on basketball. It should be the responsibility of the new GM or EVP of Basketball Operations to set the plan and direction for the organization. Without that person in place, ownership wasn’t going to be able to give him definitive plans that could persuade him to stay, since they don’t yet have that decision maker in place.

There are two different lines of thinking when it comes to evaluating whether this is good for the organization.

On the one hand, Donovan is a very good NBA coach. He’s a Hall of Famer because of what he accomplished at the NCAA level, but his leadership brings the Bulls a level of competence and respectability that doesn’t grow on trees. Donovan has proven to be incredibly adaptable in his play style, adjusting the team’s identity to the talent on the roster.

He was willing to lean into mid-range precision around DeMar DeRozan, and go to the other end of the spectrum around pace and three-point shooting without him. He got a trio of DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic to defend at a top-five level in 2023, developed young players like Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu and Matas Buzelis into high-level players and generally gets the most out of the talent on his roster one way or another.

On the other, following the trade deadline selloff and dismissal of Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations Arturas Karnisovas and General Manager Marc Eversley, the Bulls have a clean slate, and can move forward in a variety of different directions. Retaining Donovan, especially if it meant limiting what control a new lead decision-maker might have, could have caused a power imbalance that prevented the Bulls from doing what they needed to in order to build their team back up.

In the end, Donovan was never the Bulls biggest problem during Karnisovas era, but it’s for the best that the two parties move on. The Bulls are at an inflection point, starting over with their roster and management, so it only makes sense to do the same with the coaching staff. The next coach the Bulls hire may not be as good as Donovan, but for where the Bulls are now, and where they need to go to get back to competitiveness, it’s worthwhile to take a step back to ultimately take two steps forward.