Jimmy Butler and Derrick Rose are hardly considered one of the NBA’s dynamic duos.
And, for their part, they’re trying to make sure that changes.
As Jimmy Butler said, per The Chicago Tribune‘s Teddy Greenstein:
Butler said he plans to workout with Derrick Rose in the offseason.
“I think we will,” he said. “When we lose, you’ve got to find something to talk about, and why not talk about that? That’s a great story. I think that has nothing to do with anything. But, yeah, we’ll work out together and figure out ways to make ourselves coexist.”
Jimmy Butler also took the blame for the Chicago Bulls missing the playoffs, saying he wasn’t “consistent” enough. That might be true, but a left knee injury that forced him to miss extensive time, along with other health-related setbacks that permeated the rest of the roster, didn’t help things, either.
Still, if you’re the Bulls, you’re happy to hear that Rose and Butler have plans to sync up over the offseason. It means that, to some extent, they are on the same page and committed to making this partnership work. It also suggests that any hard feelings between the two stemming from Butler’s meteoric rise into franchise-cornerstone status are ebbing or have totally dissipated.
Either way, this is a good thing, even if it’s a temporary one. Derrick Rose will become a free agent next season, at which point, given his rich injury history in Chicago, it seems like he’ll leave. The Bulls themselves are in the early stages of a slight, though still important, rebuilding project, and it’s difficult to imagine Rose’s tenure with the team, barring him accepting a massive discount, extending beyond 2016-17.
