Blogs.Bulls.com

By Adam Fluck

Bulls General Manager Gar Forman will meet the media Tuesday morning from the Berto Center to address the organization’s head coaching change, which means Vinny Del Negro’s tenure in Chicago is about to end.

Tune in at Bulls.com to watch live video of Forman’s comments at 11 a.m. CT.

Del Negro was hired as the team’s 17th head coach in franchise history on June 11, 2008. After becoming the sixth Bulls head coach to guide his team to the playoffs in his first year, Del Negro’s Bulls again made the postseason this season. But he had some help from his top two players.

All-Star guard Derrick Rose was remarkable down the stretch, finishing second in the Eastern Conference in scoring (25.4 ppg) and adding 7.0 assists and 4.1 rebounds during the month of April, leading the Bulls to a 6-2 record.

Coupled with the return of center Joakim Noah, who missed 10 straight games (Chicago went 0-10) due to plantar fasciitis in his left foot from Feb. 27 to March 19, Chicago won 10 of its last 14 games and secured the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

A first-round meeting with LeBron James and the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers followed, in which the Bulls fell 4-1.

“You’re always disappointed when it ends,” Del Negro told BullsTV the day after the series ended. “It was a battle for us a lot of the season. The guys did a lot of good things and there was a lot of improvement in certain areas. But there is always that empty feeling at the end. You’re always finding ways to get better, individually and collectively as a team. I give the guys a lot of credit. They battled through a lot of injuries, adversity and distractions. They stayed together as a unit.”

When asked about the speculation surrounding his job security that day, Del Negro did not address specifics.

“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “All of those things are out of my control. I can’t control what people say or what they do or how they act. I can just control how I approach things in my preparation and how I get this team ready to play.

“My record speaks for itself,” Del Negro added. “But it’s not about me; it’s about the team, its players, and the direction the organization wants to go in.”

Del Negro will depart with a regular season record of 82-82. His teams finished 4-8 in its two playoffs series against the Boston Celtics (lost 4-3 in 2009) and Cleveland Cavaliers (lost 4-1 in 2010).