No one with a functioning brain thinks Ryan Poles deserves to lose his job this year. He is not going anywhere for at least a couple years. Has he been perfect? No. But that’s an absurd standard. No GM or coach is perfect. We can’t even be sure he wasn’t handed Eberflus as his head coach. I believe there’s an excellent chance George told Poles “choose one of these three.” Afterall, they were interviewing coaches before they even had a GM. Poles will get another HC hire if he wants one. And he should. I’d give his overall grade a B to B+. He’s rebuilt the roster to a point where they are an up and coming team in basically two years. Most GMs would still be 2-5 in this case.
Flus: I think he has some nice positives as a coach. Good at building relationships, pretty good defensive coach, the players play for him. But just too many in-game mistakes and the learning curve as a HC just doesn’t seem to be there. He’s a lot like Lovie IMO. Has some positives as a HC but just can’t out coach enough other coaches on game day. 4 blown games in which they had a 95% chance to win is pretty damning. I think Flus is toast minus a 7-3 finish. And he needs 6-4 to even entertain the idea of keeping his job IMO. The tough part of the schedule hasn’t even gotten here yet. He’s likely gone minus something pretty terrific.
Firing Flus last year would have been a tough break for him, but would have been defendable. I’d argue Doug Collins didn’t deserve to be fired by the Bulls but that worked out pretty good.
His replacement needs to be an offensive guy. At this point, Slowik is probably my choice, but that day isn’t here yet. But it’s almost certainly coming.