The Chicago Bulls have already made their first major move, dismissing executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas and general manager Marc Eversley on Monday after another disappointing season.
Chicago entered the week at 29-49, in 12th place in the Eastern Conference, and headed for a fourth straight year outside the postseason, capping a six-year front-office run that produced only one playoff appearance.
Under ordinary NBA logic, a front-office purge often puts the head coach directly in the firing line. In Chicago, though, the early reporting suggests Billy Donovan may be the exception rather than the next domino. ESPN reported that Donovan remains in place and that ownership’s top priority after the season is to meet with him and try to keep him in Chicago.
“My understanding is the Bulls want to keep [Billy Donovan] as long as he wants to be there, in Chicago.”@ShamsCharania gives more insight on the Bulls’ offseason plans after they fired their EVP of Basketball Ops and GM. pic.twitter.com/z563bimZZ5
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) April 6, 2026
That makes this a revealing moment for the franchise. The Bulls are not just changing personnel; they are trying to define where they believe the real failure has been. Since this regime took over in 2020, the team has had only one playoff berth and has drifted from a brief high point in 2021-22, when Chicago held the No. 1 seed in the East at one stage, into another prolonged stretch of irrelevance.
Shams Charania framed the situation clearly, saying,
“Billy Donovan is still there as head coach. My understanding is that the Bulls want to keep him as long as he wants to be there, in Chicago. Their No. 1 priority after the season ends, Michael Reinsdorf and Jerry Reinsdorf will meet with Billy Donovan, they’ll discuss the future, and try to keep Billy Donovan in Chicago.”
If that holds, then Chicago’s ownership is signaling that the next phase of the reset may be built with Donovan rather than against him.
For Donovan, that would amount to a notable vote of confidence at a time when very little else around the Bulls looks stable. It does not erase his record, and it does not guarantee anything long term. But it does suggest that ownership sees him as something other than a casualty of the failed Karnišovas-Eversley era. In a league where coaches are often the easiest people to replace, that distinction matters.
The bigger question now is whether continuity on the bench can mean anything without competence above it. Chicago has finally admitted that the previous structure was not good enough. The next test is whether the Bulls can pair a new basketball operations vision with a coach they still trust, and whether that combination can produce something this franchise has lacked for too long: a direction that feels like more than another restart.
