With a proven defensive pedigree and deep coaching roots, Sean Sweeney emerges as a prime candidate to lead the Chicago Bulls’ new era under Bryson Graham.
The Chicago Bulls' front office is taking shape. Now it's time to find a coach.
It's understandable that the team's EVP Bryson Graham has been busy with other priorities since his appointment earlier this month. He was spotted at the NBA Draft Combine last week at Wintrust Arena, reportedly holding meetings with at least 20 prospects — including BYU's AJ Dybantsa and Kansas' Darryn Peterson — as Chicago works through its pre-draft evaluation process.
The progress is appreciated. But adding a head coach sooner rather than later would only sharpen those player evaluations, giving the front office a clearer picture of which prospects actually fit the system they're trying to build.
As the coaching chatter picks up, one name worth circling is San Antonio Spurs assistant Sean Sweeney, who is currently helping Mitch Johnson's crew push toward the Western Conference Finals.
Not a household name, but that's fine. Graham himself arrived as a relative unknown to casual Bulls fans, and the franchise is clearly moving away from big-name empiricism toward fresh and process-driven leadership. Veteran options like Doc Rivers or Mike Budenholzer carry their own appeal, but the league's recent trend tells a different story: the Milwaukee Bucks and New Orleans Pelicans both filled their coaching vacancies quickly this offseason by going younger, hiring Tyler Jenkins and Jamahl Mosley, respectively. The Bulls should be aware of that.
Oct 24, 2024; Dallas, Texas, USA; in Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd (left) and assistant coach Sean Sweeney (right) during the game between the Dallas Mavericks and the San Antonio Spurs at the American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn ImagesSo who is Sweeney? His face might be familiar to avid NBA watchers. He kickstarted his coaching journey in the league as a video coordinator with the then-New Jersey Nets under Avery Johnson and PJ Carlesimo, eventually transitioning to the coaching staff as the franchise moved to Brooklyn in 2013. Since then, he's logged stints with the Bucks, Pistons, Mavericks and now the Spurs — a wide variety of coaching experiences that make him stand out as a strong candidate.
Much of his career has run alongside Jason Kidd. In Milwaukee and Dallas, Sweeney had a significant hand in building the defensive infrastructures of both teams, including the Mavericks' run to the 2024 NBA Finals — where Dallas ultimately fell to the Boston Celtics 4-1 — but the defensive identity Sweeney helped craft was undeniable throughout that postseason.
In San Antonio, he's been able to translate the defensive strategy into the Spurs, which limited opponents to a league-best 102 points per 100 possessions over 10 playoff games this postseason — elite defensive numbers built around Victor Wembanyama's otherworldly presence. For a Bulls team that has battled defensive inconsistency for years, that kind of expertise would work straightforwardly.
There's also a philosophical symmetry worth noting. Sweeney, 41, ground his way up from a role in the video room to one of the league's most respected defensive brains — the same bottom-up trajectory that resembles Graham and the Bulls' new GM Steven Mervis' way to rise. If Graham is rebuilding the front office with that mentality, it only makes sense to find a coach cut from the same cloth.