Billy Donovan hasn’t taken orders as an assistant coach since 1994, back when Rick Pitino ran the show at Kentucky. That’s about to change. The former Chicago Bulls coach has agreed to join the San Antonio Spurs as lead assistant under Mitch Johnson, and at least one rival coach thinks the move sets Donovan up for a return to a head coaching chair before long.
The Spurs just lost in the NBA Finals. Donovan just walked away from a play-in team. Now the two sides are betting on each other, and the league is already talking about what it means.
Billy Donovan Lands the Most Coveted Assistant Seat Around
The 61-year-old Hall of Famer, inducted in 2025, is heading to the Alamo City to serve as Johnson’s right-hand man, per ESPN’s Shams Charania. It’s a striking turn for a coach who spent the last decade-plus running his own bench, first with the Oklahoma City Thunder from 2015-20 and then with the Chicago Bulls from 2020-26.
Billy Donovan has agreed to become the lead assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs and head coach Mitch Johnson, sources tell me and @PeteThamel. After 11 seasons as a head coach in Chicago and Oklahoma City, Donovan accepts the position with the Western Conference champions. pic.twitter.com/HdhjtsQG2K
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 2, 2026
Around the league, nobody seems shocked he’d step back to do it.
“Not surprised at all,” one rival coach told The Stein Line. “Being the No. 1 [assistant] in San Antonio is the best assistant job in the league. I think it pretty much guarantees Billy will be a head coach again in this league.”
That’s a bold thing to pin on an assistant gig, but the logic holds up. San Antonio went 62-20, won the West, and pushed all the way to Game 5 before falling to the New York Knicks. Donovan also knows the room, having crossed paths with Gregg Popovich through USA Basketball.
For a coach looking to rebuild his stock, there aren’t many better places to do it. Johnson, 39, could use the ballast, too, after a rocky Finals close.
Donovan stepped down in April after six seasons with the Bulls, and he wasn’t pushed out. Chicago wanted him back. He simply declined to exercise the clause in his contract for next season.
“After a series of thoughtful and extensive discussions with ownership regarding the future of the organization, I have decided to step away as the head coach of the Chicago Bulls to allow the search process to unfold,” Donovan said in a statement.
He believed, he added, that letting a new leader build out the staff was in the team’s best interest. The NBA numbers tell a middling story: 469-413 in the regular season, but just 19-27 in the playoffs. In Chicago, the mark sagged to 226-256, with a single postseason trip across six years.
He was linked to Orlando earlier after initiating his own exit, though the Magic went with Sean Sweeney instead. So the college legend, 502-206 at Marshall and Florida with titles in 2006 and 2007, resets in San Antonio. Not as the boss. As the guy the boss leans on.
