Despite the discrepancy in minutes, there isn’t a loss of love between the two players. Mirotic has posted several pictures of the two rookies on his twitter page. The most recent post, debuting on November 6th, features a description where Mirotic describe Doug as his brother.
Nikola Mirotic has averaged 17.7 minutes per game thus far this season. For comparison purposes, Jimmy Butler averaged 8.5 minutes per game during his rookie season and Tony Snell averaged 16.0 minutes. From there it drops off dramatically with other rookies that have been drafted during Thibodeau’s stay with the Chicago Bulls. Over the last 11 games, Nikola Mirotic has played 20+ minutes every single time including five of those games with 25+ minutes to his name. He has clearly commanded the trust of Coach Thibodeau who makes players earn every single minute of playing time that they are given. In contrast, Doug McDermott, equally talented in college as Mirotic was in Euro-league play, hasn’t enjoyed the same amount of playing opportunities as Nikola. McDermott is only averaging 11.6 minutes per game and has only played 20+ minutes twice this entire season. His season high in minutes is 24 in the season opener against New York. Since then his opportunities have dwindled which is indicative of the lack of trust that his stone cold coach Tom Thibodeau has in this young talented rookie.