The NBA is back, boys and girls! While the Bulls have not yet had their media day, a group of familiar faces held theirs up in Minnesota on Friday. Jimmy Butler, Taj Gibson, their old coach Tom Thibodeau and the new-look Timberwolves spent the day doing photo shoots and interviews with the media.
The highlight of the day had to be a particular answer Jimmy had to a question about which teams he’s excited to watch this upcoming NBA season.
Check out Steve Aschburner’s question and Butler’s answer around the 5:45 mark of the video below.
"We'll have a team full of leaders."@JimmyButler sits down with @AschNBA at @Timberwolves media day. pic.twitter.com/ldLUKWqoUf
— NBA TV (@NBATV) September 22, 2017
Jimmy barely let Asch finish his question before blurting out his answer.
“The Chicago Bulls.”
Aschburner then asks Jimmy if he’ll be rooting for his former team this season. The star player’s answer seemed like a less-than-friendly “no.”
“Uuuhhh…I just want to see what they do.”
Jimmy then goes on to pivot away from directly wishing ill on the team that traded him away this summer, but his subtext isn’t that hard to decipher.
Everyone knows that Butler didn’t want to get traded. He constantly expressed not only his love for the city of Chicago and their fans, but gratitude for the organization that took a chance on him with the 30th pick of the 2011 draft. He wanted to stay here and he wanted to win here. But the Bulls front office never fully committed to Jimmy, or seemed to appreciated just how valuable he was.
I’ll just go ahead and say it. Jimmy is excited and eager to watch the Bulls play this season because he wants to see them fail without him. By now he’s adjusted to the move, plus he has plenty of familiar faces in Minnesota to ease the transition. He’s coming off his third straight All Star season and is pegged to lead a young and talented Minnesota team into Western Conference relevance. Jimmy will be fine.
His old team? They’re being widely picked to finish with the worst record in the NBA, and most people in Chicago aren’t too excited about the pieces they got in exchange for Butler to start the rebuild.
Methinks there’s a chance that Jimmy will experience some delightful moments of schadenfreude as the Bulls’ losses pile up and his old bosses continue to be battered with insults and criticism by an eroding fanbase.
I certainly won’t judge him if he does.
