New Bulls coach Billy Donovan might be just what this roster needed

Rather than allowing Bulls players to continue making excuses or playing to their weaknesses, Donovan has already started the process of building out a philosophy based on the strengths of his key players.

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“One of the things I’ve always felt like is important when you’re building out different things offensively is I think you’ve got to spend time with players to let me hear from them how do they want to be used,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said.

“One of the things I’ve always felt like is important when you’re building out different things offensively is I think you’ve got to spend time with players to let me hear from them how do they want to be used,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said.

AP

Coach Billy Donovan is about to do his best to make the Bulls’ roster excuse-proof.

You won’t be hearing ‘‘they took away my midrange,’’ “this new offense has been a big change’’ or “my arms are sore from practice pushups’’ from players anymore.

Donovan’s style isn’t predicated on making players change their strengths to fit his system. Instead, he’ll build a system that fits his players’ strengths.

Refreshing? Well, it’s simply what a good coach does.

“The first thing I’ll do is watch a lot of film,’’ Donovan said recently. “I think being in the league for five years, even though we’re playing in the West, you’re playing Chicago twice, so you have a feel for some of those guys.

‘‘But one of the things I’ve always felt is important when you’re building out different things offensively is I think you’ve got to spend time with players to hear how they want to be used.

‘‘How do they feel they’re most effective? What are the things they feel most comfortable doing? How can you take advantage of their skills and their offense? And I think you go through that with the players and talk to them and get their opinions and their thoughts.

“And then you build out how you want to play from there.’’

So the days of trying to make square pegs fit into round holes appear to be over thankfully.

Even during the Tom Thibodeau era, the old front office never seemed to be in sync with what the coaching staff wanted and needed.

Thibodeau, however, was elite enough to overcome that.

Fred Hoiberg was hired for his offensive mindset but never was provided with the players to fit his system, and Jim Boylen tried to make a poor three-point-shooting team into the Warriors.

Donovan doesn’t operate that way, and his résumé from Oklahoma City backs that up. So when he insists he will build the team based on the individual strengths of his key players, you can print it.

“There are things philosophically that are very, very important to me in terms of ball movement and player movement,’’ Donovan said. “It always comes down to the end result. The end result is how good of shots can you create on a nightly basis. That’s what you’ve got to be able to do: create good shots. And how you go about doing that employing each guy’s skill set. The same thing defensively. How do you build out? How are you going to guard pick-and-rolls? How are you going to guard certain screening actions, certain movements? And you build out from there.’’

Donovan already has been in frequent contact with Zach LaVine, Lauri Markkanen and Coby White.

Expect that dialogue to continue as Donovan dives deeper and deeper into the film work the next few months.

“I’d want to talk to those guys about where they think they’re at their best, where they think they can be most productive and effective, and then you partner with them and you work with them and you build out something where there’s going to be a level of sacrifice by every player,’’ Donovan said. “Every player is not going to have the chance to do everything that they want to do. But how do you mesh all of those guys together to get the whole to be better than the sum of the parts as a team? That would be my philosophy going forward.’’

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