It's been a rough couple of years for Windy City basketball fans since the Bulls seemingly found their first title window since the-never-shut-up-about Jordan years. But that window got ruthlessly torn away, along with the ACL of the the teams centerpiece Derrick Rose. Since then, Chicagoans have had to endure the long wait of #theReturn, the actual return (approximately five games) and then the (understandably less hyped) second "Return."
Over those two years attitudes towards the once unanimously beloved hometown point guard turned increasingly more sour, as fans questioned his toughness while he sat on the bench, at one point he even did it for several weeks after a team doctor had cleared him to play. Chicago can be a tough town, sometimes fairly, and sometimes unfairly (just ask Marc Trestman's daughters) and today ESPN's Bulls beat reporter Nick Friedell quoted Rose as candidly saying that he's already thinking about life post-retirement. This of course can't sit well with (potentially large) portions of the teams fan base. Rose said the following, as tweeted by Friedell:
Of course, there's a potentially easy solution to this. The Chicago Bulls are going to the playoffs anyway, so you could sit Rose until January to get him in-shape for the NBA's second season. I've written that somewhere in the annals of this very site, but I've found that:
A.) Tom Thibodeau apparently doesn't read Complex.
And...
B.) Nobody gives a shit what I think.
Still the quotes are telling when it comes to how the former-MVP's perspective has shifted over the past couple of injury-plagued seasons. It'll also be interesting to see how Chicago responds the next time he has a prolonged stint on the pine.
