It was a messy end between former head coach Tom Thibodeau and the Chicago Bulls front office. There was huge speculation that the two would split at the end of the season and days after getting pounded by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers on their home court, the Bulls fired Thibs.
The coaching staff hired a completely different coach as his replacement.
Fred Hoiberg, who coached at Iowa State previously, will bring a more up-tempo and fast break offense to the Bulls. This will be different than watching the Bulls grind out games under Thibs where they would go for stretches without scoring and bank on their defense to keep them in the game.
Hoiberg will keep most of the roster that was there last year for the Bulls and will likely have the same starting lineup.
He will have a backcourt duo of Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler who are expected to be a solid tandem for Chicago, although reports say those two are not on the same page.
He will have veteran Mike Dunleavy Jr as the small forward. But Dunleavy will be out for a while due to injury so his return to the court could take a while. The Bulls struggled to shoot well without him and the likes of Doug McDermott will be expected to help out with spacing the floor.
The biggest question mark for the Bulls has to be their frontcourt. Although he had a superb year last year, Pau Gasol is now a year older and seemed to run out of gas in the playoffs last year. Joakim Noah was bothered by injuries last year and many wonder if he can return to the level of play he showed when Rose was out with numerous knee injuries. Taj Gibson is coming back from ankle surgery and is the subject of many trade rumors.
Nikola Mirotic, who came from Europe and played well for Chicago last year, and rookie Bobby Portis round out the big man rotation for Chicago. They have a problem as they have too many big men to play, as Chicago will likely have to move one of these big men this season.
The biggest mystery for the Bulls will be, once again, Derrick Rose. Jimmy Butler proved to be the main scorer for the Bulls and Pau Gasol dominated in the paint for Chicago. But they did not get enough scoring from Rose. He is the deciding factor for Chicago and will need to bounce back this year.
Last year, Chicago had its best chance at beating James in the playoffs but they fell short. It costed their head coach his job and many are disregarding Chicago as a legit contender in the East. If Chicago can get consistent scoring from their stars and still keep the intensity, watch out for the Bulls.