Bulls Rumors: Thaddeus Young was told he was coming back this season

Some of the latest Bulls rumors mostly concerned moves that the team made last offseason, and what could’ve happened in hindsight. Playing off that theme, there was a new storyline that emerged this week concerning the former Bulls veteran forward Thaddeus Young, who was dealt to the San Antonio Spurs during the summer.

The Bulls shipped off Young and fellow veteran forward Al-Farouq Aminu last offseason in that big-time sign-and-trade deal that landed star shooting guard/forward DeMar DeRozan in Chicago. While the Bulls did give up a lot to get DeRozan to the Windy City, it looks to be well worth it.

Young sounds like he really wasn’t expecting to leave the Bulls last offseason, though. He was a big part of the start of the turnaround for the Bulls last season in the first year under head coach Billy Donovan. But that didn’t stop the front office from dealing him to the Spurs in the sign-and-trade deal that mainly involved DeRozan.

Bulls rumors could be contradictory with Thaddeus Young’s departure last offseason

In an interview with Alex Kennedy of The Basketball News this week, Young mentioned that this move by the Bulls to trade him to the Spurs “definitely caught me off guard”. It does make sense that Young has a qualm with how he found out able this deal going down too.

He noted in this interview that he wishes he didn’t have to find out about the deal through social media. It seems like this is a theme for how the Bulls’ management treated some of the players upon their departure last offseason. Veteran guard Tomas Satoransky has mentioned in the past that he just received a brief text message that was pretty cold after the Bulls traded him to the Pelicans during the summer.

There were plenty of changes that executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley made to the Bulls roster during the summer months. Sato and Young were two of the more than half-dozen players that would not return for the Bulls dating back to the trade deadline last season.

It feels like the Bulls’ front office was making some business decisions and didn’t care too much about the personal aspect of letting some of these players go. But this seems to be an ever-prevalent trend in the world of professional sports nowadays.

Although he’s not getting as much playing time this season with the Spurs as he did last year with the Bulls, Young is still giving the Spurs some good minutes mostly coming off the bench. He’s actually registered a career-best 3.8 box plus/minus and 22.0 player efficiency rating through 16 games played for the Spurs so far this season.