Fifth-year guard Jimmy Butler led the Bulls in scoring last season, and now he says he’s “maybe” the face of the team.
“I think people look at me now as kind of, maybe, the face of the Chicago Bulls,” Butler told Chicago Mag. “When you think of the Chicago Bulls, yeah, you think Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, and Pau Gasol, too—but maybe every now and then you think of myself.”
Butler’s words came just months after he signed a five-year, $95 million maximum contract with Chicago.
Butler’s salary now nearly matches that of onetime MVP Derrick Rose on a per-year basis.
The relationship between the duo has been questioned over the past few months, and Rose alluded to a feud between the two during the team’s media day.
Derrick Rose says feud with Jimmy Butler wouldn’t exist if they weren’t ‘two blacks’On Sports Illustrated’s annual list of the top 100 NBA players of 2016, Butler, named the NBA’s Most Improved Player in 2015, outranked Rose.
Butler was No. 18 while Rose – in part due to a long history of injuries – ranked 60th.
From SI:
Last fall, Bulls guard Jimmy Butler cracked up at the memory of himself in high school: a no-namer in small-town Texas who failed to land a D-I offer, bragging to his teammates about how he could score 40 points on Derrick Rose, his class’s No. 1 ranked prospect. Some eight years later, Butler places higher on SI’s Top 100 list than any of his Chicago teammates, including his backcourt partner, the 2011 MVP. There are fast rises, and then there’s whatever you want to call this.
The Bulls open the 2016 season Oct. 27 at Cleveland.
