The 2026 NBA champion has been crowned, but three franchises will spend draft week still hunting for the most important hire of their offseason. The Chicago Bulls, Portland Trail Blazers and Dallas Mavericks all remain without a head coach, and the first round of the draft on June 23 looms as an unofficial deadline to get it done.
Chicago is furthest along. Per ESPN's Tim Bontemps and Brian Windhorst, the feeling around the league is that the Bulls are the "closest" of the three to a hire. New basketball operations boss Bryson Graham, who arrived from Atlanta last month, has interviewed Minnesota Timberwolves assistant Micah Nori, Trail Blazers interim coach Tiago Splitter, Hawks assistant Ryan Schmidt and current Bulls assistant Wes Unseld Jr. With the No. 4 and No. 15 picks in hand, whoever lands the job is expected to prioritize developing those rookies alongside sophomore forward Matas Buzelis and point guard Josh Giddey.
Portland's process, by contrast, has gone quiet — for an unusual reason. New owner Tom Dundon also owns the Carolina Hurricanes, who sit one win from the Stanley Cup, and his attention is fixed on the NHL. ESPN reported the search is expected to stay on hold for at least a few days. Splitter and Nori have been floated as finalists, with Utah assistant Mike Williams and Boston assistant Tyler Lashbrook also in the mix, according to Bleacher Report's Adam Wells. Jeff Van Gundy, once considered a leading candidate, is no longer in the running.
In Dallas, the entire organizational philosophy shifted when Masai Ujiri was hired to run basketball operations on May 4 and moved on from Jason Kidd. There have been rumblings tying college coaches Jon Scheyer of Duke and Dusty May of Michigan to the vacancy, but the prevailing belief is that Ujiri will do what he has done before: elevate a rising NBA assistant. He replaced Dwane Casey with Nick Nurse in Toronto in 2018, then replaced Nurse with Darko Rajakovic in 2023.
Nori, one of the most coveted names on the market, made clear last week that Dallas had not yet contacted him.
"I mean, I haven't heard anything really from Dallas," Nori said. "Conversations are very early stages. Again, nothing from Dallas really. They're just beginning their search. A few conversations here and there with Portland and Chicago. But nothing too serious yet. And hopefully, as they ramp up, maybe they do get a little bit more involved."
The 52-year-old has interviewed for several head-coaching jobs in recent years, including with the Knicks last summer before New York hired Mike Brown — who just won a title in his first season. Nori would be a natural fit in Dallas given Ujiri's track record, but his comments suggest the Mavericks' wide net hasn't reached him yet.
With the draft days away and rosters about to be reshaped, all three teams face the same question: hire the right coach now, or risk heading into one of the league's busiest weeks without one.
