You’re not going to believe this, but the reports of Jimmy Butler and Derrick Rose not liking each other may be a bit overblown.
If you haven’t kept up with this story, you can read up right here, but people basically think that both guys view themselves as the Bulls’ alpha dogs, so they don’t like each other. Butler also apparently wasn’t a fan of the “special treatment” that Rose would receive while he was working his way back from his various knee injuries. Some people also love to mention that Butler and Rose apparently don’t hang out all that often off the court, with Butler pointing out that he has his group of friends while Rose has his family, so the two don’t exactly go out of their way to spend time off the court with each other.
Of course, Butler gets asked about this pretty frequently, and on Wednesday during an appearance on ESPN’s First Take, he addressed the situation as bluntly as possible. Butler said that the relationship between he and Rose is good, and that Rose has always had his back.
“I think he’s always been supportive of me being aggressive, especially on offense,” Butler said on ESPN’s “First Take” on Wednesday. “We all know that I’ll be the aggressor on defense. So from what I can tell, the guy’s always been in my corner.”
Butler also pointed out that the talk of him and Rose not getting along doesn’t pop up when the Bulls are winning, but since Chicago got bounced in the conference semifinals of the 2015 playoffs, the chatter started back up.
“The only reason that it came up is because we lost,” Butler said. “I don’t think we have any beef or whatever you want to call it. I think we just want to win. We didn’t win, so now [people say] we’re beefing, now we have a problem with each other, and I don’t think that’s the case.”
He does have a point: Talk of internal strife usually only seems to pop up in the NBA when teams are losing. For instance, just look at the way the narrative changed throughout the season with Cleveland coach David Blatt depending on whether the Cavaliers won or lost.
Regardless, it doesn’t appear like there’s much to this supposed “beef.” Both Rose and Butler seem like they have each other’s backs and want to win more than anything else, and while the talk of them butting heads will invariably come up whenever things aren’t perfect in Chicago (which happens a lot), it’s almost certainly off-base.
(via ESPN)
