New Bulls front office will play the slow game in Jim Boylen decision

In his first few weeks on the job, Arturas Karnisovas, the Bulls’ new executive vice president of basketball operations, has made four significant hires, including Marc Eversley as general manager.

So why the indecision when it comes to coach Jim Boylen and the rest of the coaching staff?

Some things warrant the slow game.

“It is really early,” Eversley said Friday during his official introduction. “[Boylen] and I did have a conversation earlier in the week, where he called to congratulate me on accepting the position. Just like anything else on our staff, we are going to utilize our time to evaluate everybody on staff — not only players, coaches, but also people in the front office, as well. I’ve spoken to Coach, we had a really great conversation and I’m looking forward to spending time with him in Chicago when we’re afforded that opportunity.”

With the NBA shut down since early March because of the coronavirus, no one knows whether commissioner Adam Silver will come up with a solution to possibly finish this season or simply move on to next year. Until the Bulls know what the league is going to do, they’re not going to make changes to the coaching staff that could create issues if this season resumes.

The other aspect of the situation is that the Reinsdorf ownership likes Boylen and undoubtedly would want the new front office to evaluate him as much as possible before passing judgment.

“My initial impression of Jim is he cares a great deal about this team and he’s as anxious as everyone else to get back in the gym,” Karnisovas said. “My first priority was to hire Marc [and other department heads] J.J. Polk and Pat Connelly in order to implement my vision, our vision, to create sustainable program that can be good for a very long time.

“Going back to coaching, we’ve had a chance to meet a couple times over Zoom. . . . I’m going to do my comprehensive evaluation of every department and ensure I give the process the time it deserves. We are limited right now with what we can do. Instead of being in the practice facility and being in Chicago, we’re at home doing video and audio calls like this one. It makes it difficult. So until we get to some level of normalcy — and I don’t know what that looks like — we will not be able to fully assess the current situation.”

Karnisovas has spoken with Bulls players, and Boylen has been a topic.

“Again, I think we owe it to everybody on staff to get to Chicago and meet them face-to-face,” Eversley said. “I think we owe to our players to hopefully get to evaluate them in practice settings, in playing settings. And we owe it to our staff to see them in those types of settings as well. I just think it’s far too early to make those types of decisions with respect to anybody on the staff until we get to Chicago.”