The Bulls have added assistant coaches Maurice Cheeks, Josh Longstaff, John Bryant, Damian Cotter and Billy Schmidt to serve under recently hired head coach Billy Donovan, the team announced Saturday.
Chicago has also brought on Henry Domercant, Ronnie Burrell, Ty Abbott and Max Rothschild as player development coordinators.
Cheeks is the biggest name of the bunch to join the Bulls’ staff. The former 15-year NBA veteran most recently served under Donovan for five seasons with the Thunder in his second stint with the organization. A native of Chicago, Cheeks not only gets to reunite with Donovan after working closely for half of the past decade but he gets to return home.
In addition to a stellar playing career, the four-time All-Star brings a wealth of coaching experience as he was the head coach for the Blazers (2001-05), Sixers (2005-08) and Pistons (2013-14). In addition to his first Thunder tenure, Cheeks has also been an assistant coach with the Sixers.
Longstaff, 38, joins the Bulls after spending the previous two campaigns under Mike Budenholzer with the Bucks. The Maine native brings a strong coaching resume in his own right, which includes assistant coaching stops with the Thunder and Knicks. Longstaff also has G League head coaching experience with the Erie Bayhawks from 2017-18.
As for Bryant, Cotter and Schmidt, they bring varying degrees of experience of coaching within basketball. Bryant joins the Bulls after spending four years with the Sixers, two of those in an assistant coach capacity. Cotter has been an assistant coach in the G League with several organizations and Schmidt has most notably served as Thunder as a director of quality control the past five seasons.
Chris Fleming is the lone holdover from last year’s staff who remains with the club in an assistant coaching capacity.
If the Bulls make the playoffs, hopefully he won’t get fired like he was in OKC.
I’d like to think Bulls understand they are in a rebuild time. That said there are expectations for them to improve. Not a fan of a knee jerk reaction but there is a standard of play that will be expected…
I mean I think they’ve already improved based on the firing of Jim Boylen. The jury is out on the front office though. It’ll take 2-3 years of top scouting and drafting. The problem was Bulls never were a good scouting team for a long time. They had so many misses during the GarPax era. The scouting and drafting NEED to improve. I firmly believe that will happen with the new regime. It’s up to LaVine/WCJ/Markkanen/White/Gafford to make the adjustments. I think next year will be a year of full evaluation of the roster. I hope they don’t extend Markkanen without seeing a full season from him. Maybe see if a team will trade for Lavine after next year. His contract is affordable and he is still relatively young. There’s a few assets on this team. The cup isn’t exactly bare, but having a coach like Donovan who can build up players and help them progress into real players help. I see a 27-35 win season and a 8th spot if Markkanen stays healthy and WCJ stays out of foul trouble. White is more of a Lou Williams and is instant offense off the bench. I am hoping they trade for a real floor general or draft LaMelo. We need to get earlier into our plays and also run a legitimate NBA caliber fast break with a point guard who can push the ball and get easier baskets. Pace pace pace. That’s what I’m hoping for. Sorry for the rant though. Hope this post wasn’t too long.
I thought this was going to be a 72 game season. 27 wins would be disappointing since they won 20 in a 65 game season this year, and 22 in an 82 game the year before. That is not really much improvement, Donovan is worth a few more wins than that. Just for knowing when to call time outs. 8))
Yeah that last play in G7 was horrible. I think Donovan brings that “it” factor though. He’s a little more seasoned than Atkinson or others. I do think defensively this team is horrible. Too many easy baskets allowed. They need an enforcer on this team. I’m hoping they sign a guy like Marcus Morris to give them some toughness and grit. I’d love to see them make a run for Josh Jackson and see what Donovan can develop him into. He’s still relatively young. He can be a Bruce Bowen/Corey Brewer type and just focus on defense and run the floor on fast break.
He wasn’t fired in OKC? More anti-thunder rhetoric from you. Don’t you have your own crappy team on the verge of collapse to worry about?
He’s too busy trashing on everyone else to respond. Why don’t you go back to the lamello poll article and see how he got verbally beat down and won’t respond. Because he’s, well, him.
This trolling useless comment exists so he can backhandedly claim that Donovan was fired by OKC, which is unlikely.
Do you mean like D’Antoni was fired from Houston? Maybe if your team figured out it needed a player over 6’7 to battle AD in the west, you wouldn’t be too worried about what current/former OKC players or coaches have done. You sound like a typical petty Houston sports fan. Haven’t won anything since 1995. Had Yao but broke him, had TMac and could never win with him. How many more players will Westbrook and Harden alienate in the NBA? Think I found Dionnis’ burner account.
Man, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Good ole Dionis.
LOL I haven’t seen him in about 2 years. He was always on NYK and kept saying KD to NYK. Suddenly he disappeared and now HW-MVPs shows up? Just odd to me….
Maurice Cheeks was not liked in Chicago as a player cause he played so hard and fast he would piss opponent off a lot like Van Lair stormy Normy. Hope he coach that way.