A Heat spokesperson said on Monday that assistant general manager Adam Simon – who also serves as the team’s VP, basketball operations – will be remaining with the franchise, according to reports from Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald and Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel (Twitter link).
Simon was one of a handful of executives rumored to be drawing interest from the Bulls, who are looking to hire a new head of basketball operations. Chicago has reportedly been keeping a close eye on Miami’s office structure and had Simon high on its wish list, but the team won’t get a chance to interview with the veteran Heat executive.
In some cases, when a team wants to keep an executive who is drawing interest from a rival club, that exec receives a promotion and/or a raise. It’s not clear yet if that will be the case for Simon, who grew up in South Florida and is highly regarded by the Heat for his scouting and draft work, according to Jackson.
The Bulls’ initial list of front office targets was said to include Simon, Pacers GM Chad Buchanan, Raptors GM Bobby Webster, and Nuggets GM Arturas Karnisovas. Like Simon, Buchanan will be remaining with his current team, and there’s a belief that Webster will do the same. However, Chicago has reportedly received permission to interview Karnisovas and Jazz GM Justin Zanik.
Yeah, no one REALLY wants that Bulls job and a lot of people, and for very good reason, see it as a pariah. Unless you’re really successful in the league as a head of front office like Ujiri, you could one chance as head of a front office. That’s it. One. Are you going somewhere with the Reinsdorfs as owners, a terrible head coach you probably have to keep on another year because you need a coaching vacancy in summer 2021 to lure a star (stars want to choose their coach), only a handful of decent players (and one near allstar), and likely no high draft picks in the foreseeable future? A lot of negatives attached to the job. Plus stars don’t like going to cold weather environments generally. I live in Chicago. It’s a brutal, long winter.
In 25 years the Bulls have gone from the Marquee Franchise in all of sports to an absolute embarrassment. Players aren’t interested, executives around the league laugh at their ineptness and all this without changing ownership.
Half ass bulls as always. They leak to press that GarPax will both be retained, plus who knows about Collins. Gar is like Littlefinger, Chaos is a ladder. Know one, who respects themselves, as many have already said, would want to enter that cesspool. And they have to nerve to leak that Boylen, the con job, might be kept on for a year!! Wow. Ownerships really doesn’t get it. NBA is decades ahead of them.
These three comments before me says it all. When the Bulls depart , without offering him a piece of ownership, the rest of the league top players didn’t, and still don’t, want to play for Chicago. The way they took the greatest player in basketball history, made every one of them reject offers from the Bulls.
Given the conditions of the front office , and ownership, now make it extremely difficult to sign any upper echelon office and coaching individuals. If they don’t sell this team, it may be twenty- to thirty years for the Bulls to become relevant again. I know I lost interest in them after breaking up the 6th championship team.
That didn’t take long for Simon to say not thanks. Heat vs Bulls is no brainer decision for anyone.
Until the son us given full control of the team for a top to bottom clean out of the GarPax, Collins rats nest, nothing will change. It’s basically a 2-3 year stepping stone for whoever takes the job.
How about a Olynik, 2020 1st for Markkanen to the Heat ?
If you do an Olynik for Markkanen you woud need like 10 1sts at least for him! You could try to keep it a bit more realistic, I mean CHI sucks but surely not even them would give away a potential star player for a scrub!