Bulls general manager Jerry Krause said Wednesday he hoped to have a new coach within the next few weeks, but that it won’t be assistant coach Bill Cartwright or former assistant John Paxson.
Krause said he will hire a coach for the “long haul,” and the team is intent on bringing Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen back.
“We lost a great coach and we lost a great trainer, but we want to bring our team back,” he said.
“We’re going to sit down and talk about it and start our search. This thing (draft) has been more time consuming than anything I’ve been involved in,” Krause said, who added the Bulls tested about two dozen players and interviewed about 40 in the weeks leading up to the draft.
Krause said Cartwright was not a candidate because of throat surgery he is expected to undergo soon. “We’re not going to know about his ability to, say, holler for maybe a year,’y’ Krause said.
“The way we hired before has always been defense, has always been people skills,” Krause said. “We hired Phil Jackson and people wondered what we’d done, the hippie. We like people who can coach defense and have people skills. I think at this point we would bring in (a coach) for the long haul.”
