Derrick Rose spoke with the media following the Thursday morning shootaround, and covered a number of topics on all things Bulls.
Maybe the most eye-opening, however, was Rose admitting that Jimmy Butler might just be the most talented teammate he’s played with since joining the organization.
“I think so, man. I think so,’’ Rose said. “Who knows how good he can become. He’s playing … I just love his patience right now. He’s playing with unbelievable patience. He’s not rushing anything, he knows what he’s getting whenever he’s in the pick-and-roll or whenever he’s in the isolation. He’s reading everything right, right now.’’
The other interesting tidbit from Rose was his opinion on why the team didn’t lose faith in first-year coach Fred Hoiberg a few weeks back, in the wake of some bad losses, as well as Butler criticizing Hoiberg about needing to “coach harder.’’
“We never talk about things that go on the outside,’’ Rose said. “That’s the crazy thing about it. [Hoiberg] touched on it a little bit right when it was going on, and we haven’t heard anything since then. Since then Jimmy has been playing some great, great basketball, we’ve been finding our identity as far as, like I said on the offensive side, who is getting the ball, who is shooting the ball at certain times of the game. And defensively, we always got room to improve on the defensive side.
“But I don’t know, we got a good group here. It seems like guys are focused. They’re not worried about themselves. We’re just trying to give the team everything that we have and try and win a championship.’’