Just when you thought things couldn’t get any stranger with the Chicago Bulls, now this.
According to Ryen Russillo of ESPN, who appeared on Mike & Mike, the Bulls attempted to sabotage the career of Jimmy Butler as he was set to become a free agent in effort to reduce his asking price in free agency.
It’s certainly a bit over the top, but a Reddit snippet has the juicy NBA rumor details which involves the rampant Boston Celtics trade talk:
Holy shit. Please tell me someone is watching Mike and Mike on ESPN. Ryen Russillo* basically came on the show and said that Jimmy Butler and the Bulls FO are at odds and thats why there are so many Jimmy to Celtics rumors. Russillo* said basically that before Jimmy was a restricted free agent after his 3rd year he was averaging 13 ppg and the bulls FO offered him a 4 yr/44 mil extension to which Jimmy declined. The Bulls FO then told him that’d they’d start TONY SNELL over him and give SNELL jimmy’s minutes and give Jimmy the minutes Snell got off the bench to hurt his numbers and crash his value in the upcoming free agency. Thibs caught wind of this and basically said “fuck that, I’m starting Jimmy” and Jimmy averaged 20ppg and got cashed out. This is why Jimmy and Thibs are so close, because Thibs had his back and this is also supposedly one of the reasons why Thibs and the FO had issues. So now Jimmy has this distrust for the Bulls FO and also distrusts Fred Hoiberg* because Jimmy sees Fred as an extension of the FO. And then Wade came over and Jimmy basically told Wade everything that happened and wade sympathized with him because of all the fuck shit he dealt with in MIA which adds to why Jimmy and Wade are so close
There’s two thought processes in play here.
One? A bunch of fake garbage.
Or..that there’s some truth in there.
For what it’s worth, Russillo isn’t usually one to churn up rumors for pageviews. And while he might not always hit a home run, he’s generally been pretty accurate with a lot of his NBA rumors.
It’s no secret the Chicago Bulls front office is and has been a toxic mess for years now, so while this might need to be taken with a grain of salt there’s likely some truth involved as well.
