Arturas Karnisovas had his man in his sights. He needed to wait only one more sleep before calling Marc Eversley to offer him the Bulls’ vacant general manager position on the morning of Monday, April 27 — a date agreed upon by Karnisovas and Bulls president Michael Reinsdorf when they decided on Eversley for the job.
But he couldn’t help himself.
“I was watching ‘The Last Dance’ [Episodes 3 & 4 Sunday night],” Karnisovas said on Eversley’s introductory conference call Friday afternoon. “I was so emotional watching it, I was thinking, ‘Why do I have to wait until Monday. Let me check if he’s up.’
“He’s on his couch watching (‘The Last Dance’). It’s late, it’s around 1 a.m. ET, so I’m doing the same, but now I’m calling him to offer him the job, while ‘The Last Dance’ is in the background.”
Eversley, of course, accepted.
Now, was that laying it on a little thick for the fans at home? Sure. But it also speaks to the dichotomy of the Bulls’ brand around the NBA.
On the one hand, that beet-red, scowling cattle mug is synonymous with basketball immortality — an everlasting dynasty headed by the single most iconic name in sports history, which “The Last Dance” is currently depicting for all the world to behold.
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On the other, those years are long passed, swept under the rug by 22 years of retooling, rebuilding and general toil. The only respite was a half-decade of Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah and company, and even those teams produced just one conference finals appearance (and one win in that series). Far below the standards of the Bulls of yesteryear.
Eversley spoke to that dichotomy in his introductory conference call.
“To Arturas’ story from last (Sunday) night, back then the Bulls were one of the strongest brands in the NBA,” Eversley said. “It’s my hope that I can take some of the lessons that I’ve learned at Nike and implement them here with Chicago as a goal to get the Chicago Bulls back to relevancy, and get that brand back to where it’s cool again and kids want to be part of it. That’s one of my goals for sure.”
That should be music to the ear’s of many. But the natural follow up: How?
For starters, Eversley preached a players-first approach to organization building and development that should ring fresh to observers obsessive and casual. What’s more, his history working his way from Nike retail store manager to Nike marketing executive to well-regarded player personnel official with multiple NBA franchises (and the relationships he fostered along the way with the likes of Joel Embiid, DeMar DeRozan and Vince Carter), lend credence to those words.
“Simply put, it was critical,” Eversley said of his experience working at Nike, specifically. “I’m still extremely close to a lot of the guys at Nike today. That really taught me the true value of connecting the dots, is what we used to say.
“Relationships move the needle in this business, and it really starts at the grassroots. I was fortunate enough to work at Nike at a time when LeBron James and players like that were coming up through the system. It really taught me the value of relationships. It taught me the value of a brand, really. Nike is one of the most powerful brands in the world.”
As is the Bulls’ brand. Or at least, it used to be. Key to building it back up will be player development, both for the purpose of improving the on-court product, and flipping the Bulls’ league-wide reputation on its head. Though every NBA franchise would say they value player development, the Bulls haven’t proven that to be true of them in their allocation of resources in recent years.
Eversley (and Karnisovas) are here to change that.
“One of my mottos is ‘players first.’ I think you have to create a players-first mentality,” Eversley said. “I was surprised to find that there was one player development coach on the staff as I was doing my research for this job. That’s a hell of a job for one person to take on. It's gonna be one of my tenets to try and figure out our player development system.
“There's a lot of key areas within it. Skill development, physical development, mental enhancement. But with that, you need to hire people to help support that, so we're going to do a pretty diligent job in terms of looking for the proper staff to bring in here to work with our young guys, but player development is going to be a tremendous focus for this organization moving forward.”
As Eversley notes, future hires will be essential to monitor, as will Eversley and Karnisovas’ interaction with players (and said players’ progress), if or when the Bulls are able to reconvene as a team. There remains much work to be done.
But Eversley’s cognizance of the value of branding, and the little things that go into building top-to-bottom organizational health, are as critical a step in the right direction as the Bulls could take at this juncture. There's enough for him and Karnisovas to work with — a major market city, recognizable brand and talented, albeit young, roster — that optimism is warranted.
In turn, the coolness will come.
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