The Chicago Bulls will be extremely fun to watch this season. Lucky for Bulls fans though, they have another team to cheer for in the West.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Chicago Bulls basically have two teams this year. They have the classic Chicago Bulls (plays at the United Center, wears red – you know the team), and then they have the Minnesota Timberwolves (or the TimberBulls) located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with more familiar Bulls faces on the roster than the actual team in Chicago.
After hiring Tom Thibodeau, trading for Jimmy Butler, signing Taj Gibson and signing Derrick Rose, the Minnesota TimberBulls showed this week that they aren’t done getting the band back together.
Thibs and co. will also reunite with former All-Star Luol Deng after inking him to a 1-year, $2.4 million deal.
Can you imagine if the Wolves could somehow find a way to acquire Joakim Noah? They could potentially play a lineup consisting of Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler, Luol Deng, Taj Gibson and Joakim Noah (with Thibs yelling “ICE!” from the sideline, of course). I don’t know about you, but as a long time Bulls fan, this would make me extremely happy.
As most of you know, the Bulls are a huge question mark this season. They’ll be fun to watch, but their success is hard to predict. Maybe it will all work out as hoped or maybe too many injury-prone, ball-dominant young guys will turn out to be a bad thing. I’m obviously hoping for the former, but if the latter happens to come true, at least Bulls fans can tune into Wolves games to see how the 2012 squad is doing.
All joking aside, it’s fun to see Thibs stick with the guys he knows best, and it’s fun to see them trusting him in return.
Despite all of these guys not being what they used to be (including Jimmy Butler but in a different way), it’s cool to see them taking on new roles, in a new city, with a new team.
Young guys like Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins, Tyus Jones, Josh Okogie and Keita Bates-Diop all have a lot to learn and who better to learn from than a cast of players that played on a 62 win team?
Clarification: Jimmy Butler didn’t play on the 62 win team, but the others did. Jimmy’s first year was on a 50 win team.
The Minnesota TimberBulls just became my second favorite team in the league, and it’s not even close. All we need now is for Carlos Boozer to come back and join the squad.