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By Brett Ballantini | Posted March 19, 2008

We tend to measure success with the most obvious markers, and in sports those markers are clear: wins and championships.

And, when we need to dig a little deeper to detect success, the qualifier is passion; losses are somehow diminished by how much a player laid himself out on the floor. Consider how often you as a fan determine a player’s worth based on how red in the face he gets over a play, win or lose.

But one little prefix could spell the difference between Jim Boylan becoming just another head coach, to be ground up in the NBA mill, and his ultimate success in charge of the bench: com-. As in, compassion.

Indeed, it’s Boylan’s compassion—feeling for his team rather than simply demanding from it—that has accompanied his first steps as Bulls Head Coach.

Take, for example, Boylan’s initial demands of a Bulls team that had not performed up to par in its initial 26 games. As the lead assistant on former Head Coach Scott Skiles’s staff, Boylan understood the struggles and tenor of the team. Rather than squeezing his fist, he opened his hand.

“Hey, I’d been with these guys in the high moments, and I’d suffered with them this year when we weren’t fulfilling expectations,” Boylan says. “Obviously, we [the coaching staff] were feeling a lot of pressure, too.

“I told the guys that we shouldn’t concentrate so much on winning. Let’s concentrate on letting go of the things we can’t control and free ourselves to be the kind of players we know we are. Live in the moment.”

If it were that easy, no coach would ever find himself standing with an empty bowl in a soup line. Yet Boylan’s pep talk proved the perfect antidote, as the Bulls went out and hustled their way to a 103-99 hard-fought victory in his coaching debut.

“There’s a change. The players can feel it,” says forward Luol Deng. “We’ve started playing with a lot of excitement and energy. [Boylan] has helped us change our way of thinking.”

Boylan coached for six years in college and 14 years in the NBA, working with the elite of the coaching fraternity, including Lenny Wilkens and Mike Fratello with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Jud Heathcote at Michigan State. In the case of his Cleveland experience, Boylan was able to observe firsthand the kinds of temperament he would one day display in the head coach’s chair in Chicago.

“Lenny was an excellent game coach. Like Scott [Skiles], he made terrific in-game adjustments,” Boylan says. “Mike was more professorial in style, a teacher of the game, cool in any situation. When the pressure was on, Lenny and Mike were at their best.

“It’s part of who you are as a coach, to be calm under pressure. Either you can do it or you can’t. I don’t get rattled. When the heat is on, I believe I’m actually at my best.”

The early returns indicate Boylan may better resemble the cool Wilkens than the somewhat fiery and demanding Fratello.

Often described as laid back and easy going, when the ball’s in play, Boylan’s competitive nature proves second to none.

“That’s probably true,” Boylan acknowledges. “There was a trust Lenny placed in his players that I think I keep with me. They are the ones who win games. I’m just here as the orchestrator or organizer, and hopefully I bring good ideas to the table. But we’re all collaborators together, both players and coaches.”

Lest fans think Boylan is going to go all Cool Hand Luke on them, there’s a feisty side of the new head man that is sure to surface from time to time. After all, he cut his competitive teeth playing at Marquette University for the King of Wisecracks himself, Hall of Fame coach Al McGuire.

Boylan was a New Jersey prep star who’d excelled in Division II for Assumption College in Massachusetts and wanted to test his skills at a higher level. Desiring a transfer, he first contacted the legendary Dean Smith at the University of North Carolina.

“Jim was a tough kid, a great ballplayer who would make any team better,” says Smith, whose Tar Heels would go on to face Marquette for the 1977 NCAA title. “I just didn’t have an open spot on the roster for him, but I liked Jim so much that I referred him to a guy I thought would be a perfect fit, Al McGuire at Marquette.”

Smith was right. McGuire, seeing more than a little of himself in this hardscrabble East Coast playmaker, jumped at the chance to bring Boylan to Milwaukee. Boylan would end up as a starting guard for the 1977 National Champions.

“Jim Boylan was a perfect fit for that team,” McGuire said some years after that title season. “He was a tough kid who didn’t care about scoring. He just hustled and did anything to put us in the win column.”

Boylan’s toughness is something that Chicago fans and media rarely saw as he sat in the assistant’s chair next to Scott Skiles. But those who truly know and understand his competitive nature insist the Bulls’ new headmaster won’t take a backseat when it comes to desire and a will to win.

“Jim can be soft spoken,” says Wilkens, the consummate low-key mentor. “But he’s got a wealth of knowledge and passion for the game of basketball. He wasn’t a senior staff member for me, but that didn’t keep him from ever voicing his opinions.”

“Don’t let his being a cooperative coach and a personable guy fool you,” Fratello insists. “Jim brings a lot of passion to the game, and he and his team won’t back down to anybody.”

Not that there was an option, given a disappointing 9-16 start, but the new man in charge of the Bulls wasn’t about to keep the status quo. Boylan had a long confab with Bulls Executive Vice President John Paxson while the team was in San Antonio under the guidance of assistant Pete Myers, and a new plan for the 2007-08 Bulls was quickly drawn up.

One obvious way that Boylan’s Bulls are looking different these days is in their playing pace. The new leader is no fan of dragging offenses and endless isolations, encouraging his guys to step up the tempo even further—the Bulls ranked 11th, fifth, and sixth in pace factor (possessions per 48 minutes) in Skiles’s three full seasons—and tightening his rotations in order to recover the offensive crispness that marked the 2006-07 Bulls.

From Boylan’s first game forward, the bedraggled Bulls of late 2007 gave way to a sort of Phoenix Suns East style of play, pushing the ball at all times and eliminating the clock management and overdribbling that had begun to stymie the free-flowing manner that had previously characterized a young, deep, and athletic Chicago bunch.

“I needed to see us step up in our transition,” Boylan says. “We need to run the whole floor, for layups, rather than pull up and stop [at the] foul line.”

Boylan's coaching influences include many of the game’s most respected names: Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens, legendary college coach Jud Heathcote, NBA veterans Mike Fratello, Brian Hill and the man he replaced, Scott Skiles.

In spite of his auspicious debut handling the reins, Boylan knows that the Bulls job comes with no guarantees.

“Nothing is ever promised to any of us,” he says. “A lot of people picked us to win the division, and where has that gotten us? We all know we have to prove it, night-in, night-out.”

Another interim head coach who’d tenured for 14 years in the league and grabbed his first coaching job at age 52 might feel panicked into pressuring players, trotting out playbook gimmicks and otherwise treating his coaching audition as the most important item on the plate. Not Jim Boylan.

His demeanor is refreshing, in fact. Typical of his buck-stops-here postgame assessments, Boylan graded himself “a six” on a 10-point scale after his debut win vs. Milwaukee: “There are certain things I know I can and will improve on. As I get more comfortable and get my feet on the ground, all those things will come.”

Coincidence or not, it appears that Boylan has the perfect bedside manner for the Bulls. Exhibit A is Ben Gordon.

The fourth-year shooting guard presents the biggest challenge on the floor for Chicago—not just to opponents, but to his own team. He’s the ace scorer, capable of incredible hot streaks rivaling any in the league, yet he is undersized for his position.

Adding to the challenge was the fact that, with Paxson vowing to play a bigger role in playing decisions, it was determined that Gordon should move back to the sixth-man role, where he has undeniably flourished in the past. Talk about a potential crisis that could have grounded Boylan before his first flight.

“I knew we had success with [Gordon as sixth man] in the past,” Boylan says. “In taking over the team, I was looking at ways to provide a spark. That move was an obvious one.”

Yet Boylan was not unaware of the pressure Gordon, a notorious gym rat whose work ethic is unquestioned, has placed upon himself in this, a contract year. As a former player, Boylan’s also savvy to the cache the starting lineup provides, particularly to younger players.

“Ben is a big part of this team,” the coach says, echoing the oft-repeated adage that it matters not who starts, but who finishes games. “We’re going to ride him and keep him out there. He’s going to get big minutes.”

“I wasn’t happy [about the change], but Coach wanted to bring more scoring off the bench,” Gordon says. “At the end of the day, I just want the team to win and for everybody to do well. So I told him, if that’s what he thinks will work, then I was all for it.”

In truth, sliding Gordon to the bench wasn’t a demotion as much as it was a decision to get Chicago’s only pure point guard, Chris Duhon, inserted in the lineup. With Duhon in charge of the offense from the opening tip, the Bulls have been able to get into a free-flowing rhythm by running the floor from the onset, as well as taking better care of the ball.

It’s not that the Bulls won two of Boylan’s first three games; it was the way they won them. The decision to establish solid playmaking first and foremost has paid off in a big way: Hinrich took a 5.7 assists average into Boylan’s tenure and pushed that number up to 9.0 assists in those first three games.

Boylan’s first experience in the spotlight came in 1977 as Hall of Fame coach Al McGuire’s starting point guard at Marquette. Boylan helped lead the Warriors to an upset of North Carolina for NCAA National Championship that season.

Likewise Captain Kirk brought 2.1 assists-per-turnover pre-Boylan and upped that stat to 5.3 in the next three; Duhon went from a modest 2.7 to a gaudy 11 assists-per-turnover. The team as a whole went from assisting on 61% of made field goals to 63%, a modest, yet significant sign that ball movement was back in vogue.

True to form, Boylan was quick to compliment the man making the biggest sacrifice, Gordon, than either of his super-efficient ball-handlers.

“What can I say? Ben came right out and played terrific,” he says. “His defense was very good, he moved the ball well and he made big plays. He responded by getting into his best rhythm of the season.”

Gordon says that the key to his acceptance of the move back to sixth man had the most to do with how the subject was breached. Or said another way, it takes one low-key guy to know one.

“Jim is laid-back,” Gordon says. “He explained what the move would mean and what it wouldn’t mean. It sort of told me that change isn’t necessarily bad. Sometimes you need change to stir things up.

“He has me and the other guys more relaxed than before. Guys are enjoying themselves.”

See a pattern here? What distinguishes Boylan isn’t his basketball know-how. It isn’t necessarily his passion for the game. It’s the personal connection he makes with his players. It’s the compassion Boylan has for “his guys.”

Pete Myers is in his ninth season with the Bulls, and was Boylan’s competition for the interim head coach position. Perpetually sunny and cut from the same compassionate cloth as Boylan, Myers sees a bright future ahead for the guy he tabs a “new age” coach.

“Jim’s not going to be standing up all the time yelling and screaming,” Myers says. “He’s smart about how he approaches certain players, distinguishing guys who he can correct on the court from guys he needs to talk with privately.”

Most importantly, Boylan has succeeded in stripping down what had become an inexorably complicated season of eluded expectations and independent agendas.

“What I tell everybody is to compete hard, play as a team, live in the moment, and win the next play. Put everything else out of mind.

“If we do that, there’s no question we’ll relax and get back to playing the way we all know the Chicago Bulls can play.”