For those that are worried that Chicago Bulls are stuck to Billy Donovan’s because of his newly contract…

We do not know the clauses of his specific contract. NBA contracts often come with clauses where if a head coach is fired without cause [(employee is being let go, but not because of any serious workplace misconduct,)](https://dominguezfirm.com/employment-lawyer/fired-without-cause/) the coach’s contract must be honored but it depends on the clause. Sometimes the team only has to pay half, sometimes only one year of the remaining contract, etc.\*\* Of course if there’s a serious misconduct and the employee is fired “with cause” then this discussion is moot because the rest of the contract will be invalidated.

So even for “fired without cause” often times contracts come with off-set clauses. These clauses prevent a head coach ([I’m looking at you Mike Brown](https://www.espn.com/blog/golden-state-warriors/post/_/id/4701/cavaliers-still-send-paychecks-to-warriors-coach-mike-brown)) from being paid in full by as many as three teams in Brown’s case (LA/CLE/GS) for example, if I’m paying you $100 per hour, and you get hired by the next company that pays you $85 per hour, a full offset clause means I’m only paying you $15 per hour for the rest of our contract agreement.

I know the NFL not only uses a full offset clause, but there’s a clause in the contract that says if a coach is fired they have to start looking for another similar job.\* That’s harder to enforce, but at least it’s in the contract. More importantly, teams have successfully sued other teams to pay coaches market value. There was a situation where a team hired another coach and paid him for significantly less his market value, knowing that the old team he was fired from was still paying him. The old team threatened to sue until the new team aid the coach market value.\*

\*I found a great article about this from someone that worked in the front office but can’t find it. I’ll try to link it in the comments.

\*\*I found a FANTASTIC article about this from 2016 not only explaining NBA head coach contracts but the dude actually had actual examples from recently fired coaches. I saves the article just to link here, but I can’t find it now.

So if I can find both articles, I’ll try to edit this text, or if I can’t, I’ll link it in the comments. When more and more qualified championship-caliber coaches recently entered the market, it made me do research because I hate to be tied down to Billy Donovan when other, much more qualified coaches become available. The good thing is Bill isn’t a terrible coach (vs, say, Egghead) so if the Bulls fire him there’s a real good chance a rebuilding squad will hire him, pay market value, and this will at least partially offset what the Bulls will need to pay him.

So guys, I’m not sure if Billy will be fired this off-season (that is “above my paygrade” to explain here, I’ll need a good insider, and by insider someone that can get into not only AKME and what they are thinking but the Reinsdorfs, both Jerry and his family members. The fact that both the Bulls and White Sox have utterly failed to build a winning culture lately (with similar symptoms as lethargy, not caring enough to win, common injuries, etc) means there’s a pattern happening with Reinsdorf teams happening in his old age. It may be something it may be nothing, but the level of disappointment for two Reinsdorf teams that were fully expected to go deep in the playoffs (not be below .500) happening at the same time, there’s something that can be unearthed there.

by VanLifeThrowAwae