No telling what to expect if Collins is Bulls' coach
Doug Collins should be a known commodity. He coached the Bulls for three seasons, continued to live in Chicago for several years and has been on the air weekly sharing his basketball knowledge as a TNT game analyst.
Still, it's difficult to tell exactly what the Bulls would be getting into if they bring back Collins.
Some might reach back to 1989 searching for the answer, but Collins has obviously changed during the past 19 years. Now 56, Collins isn't likely to sprint across the court to celebrate a game-winning basket.
His intensity level, which helped lead to quick burnouts with the Bulls and later in Detroit, has certainly diminished. He appeared calmer and wiser during an unsuccessful two-year run with Washington from 2001-03.
Will he be as demanding on today's Bulls as he was during Michael Jordan's early years? Well, these Bulls do need to be pushed, as is the case with most NBA players in this era of multimillion-dollar salaries.
Will he embrace the role of teacher and work patiently with the Bulls' young talent, particularly the No. 1 pick in this month's draft? One reason cited for his 1989 dismissal from the Bulls was being too rigid with young stars Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant.
Collins' last experience with a No. 1 draft pick didn't work well at all, although he was in a tough situation with the Wizards in 2001. Under intense pressure to win right away during Jordan's second comeback, Collins tried to accelerate the progress of straight-from-high school power forward Kwame Brown.
Brown turned out to be a huge disappointment, but who knows whether Collins or Jordan deserved blame? Phil Jackson didn't make any progress, either, once Brown was traded to the Lakers.
Think about this for a second: The Wizards made the wrong choice with the No. 1 pick in 2001 but managed to trade Brown to the Lakers for Caron Butler, a brilliant move. The Bulls landed second pick Tyson Chandler, who turned out to be a much better player, and traded him for a one-year rental of P.J. Brown.
Anyway, back to Collins. What kind of style will he play? His greatest post-Bulls success came with the Pistons in the mid-1990s. He took a team that had gone 28-54 and improved to 46 and 54 wins during his first two seasons behind a younger, healthier Grant Hill.
Both of those Pistons teams ranked second in the league in scoring defense. Offensively, they were near the bottom, averaging 95.1 and 94.2 points.
Defense is great, but with the NBA trending back toward higher-scoring games, can Collins deliver offensively? Is he the right coach to guide dynamic point guard Derrick Rose, the Bulls' likely choice for the No. 1 draft pick?
If Collins does become the Bulls' head coach -- and there is still work to be done on that end -- he'll be a familiar face carrying plenty of mystery. That's the way it goes for someone who hasn't coached in five years or been to the playoffs since 1997.
The Pistons could throw another wrench into the Bulls' search by firing coach Flip Saunders. Some news outlets are predicting a change in Detroit following Saunders' third straight loss in the Eastern Conference finals.
If that happens, there's a good chance Bulls general manager John Paxson will seek to speak with Saunders before settling on Collins or anyone else.