For the past month we have been hearing Jimmy Butler in trade talks. With all the apparent friction in the Bulls Locker Room throughout this past season it was clear that either Derrick Rose or Jimmy Butler would be gone.
Now I thought it should be Rose and not Jimmy. Butler is clearly the better player and the Bulls listened to me! DRose is out! It was at that point where I thought the Butler talk would go away, but it got stronger. The Celtics pushed, the Minnesota Timberwolves jumped into the frame, but the 3rd pick was in and was never traded away. The Celtics said they were nowhere near and the T’Wolves talk fizzled. But what makes me raise an eyebrow is that Bulls GM Gar Forman has said they never shopped Butler.
“During the draft, we started getting some texts and saw something on TV that we were in heated talks with somebody. I don’t know what it was saying. We were in no talks with anybody. There was no discussion during the entire draft this evening as far as Jimmy Butler was concerned.”
“We have never made a call in regards to Jimmy Butler,” Forman said. “We’ve talked about, we value Jimmy Butler, we’re very happy to have Jimmy Butler. We’ve got a phenomenal basketball player who was an All-Star and All-NBA defender, is still young. Obviously we’ve got him under contract long-term, those are all positive. He, again, is what we want to be. We’ve said this all along. We like Jimmy Butler, we did not shop Jimmy Butler. Did we receive calls? Of course we did, and that’s our job to listen to calls. We get calls on a lot of our players, and that’s stuff that happens all throughout the league.“
Hmm I have a feeling that Gar Forman is spitting half truths here. Sure he didn’t call anyone selling Butler but it’s not as if he immediately put down the phone as soon as they mentioned Butler. He definitely listened and made counter offers, I believe that implicitly. But Butler is still with the Bulls, we still got July 1st to come around so don’t expect this to die out.
