OT: Jimmy Butler Injury

[MUAlphaBangura]

Jimmy Butler out 3-6 weeks with a sprained elbow ligament. No surgery will be required.

[Goose85]

That will be tough for the Bulls. He seems to be the glue for that team.

[mufan2003]

Jimmy Butler could probably use the rest, seeing he leads the league in minutes played. However, with Rose out as well, Chicago's seeding may drop for the playoffs. If they are both back for the playoffs and are a #5 seed, I would not want to be the #1 seed having to possibly play Chicago as early as the 2nd round.

[Alan Bykowski, "brewcity77"]

The Bulls won't go anywhere under Thibs. JFB leads the league in minutes, now he's hurt. And Derrick is hurt. And Gasol has played too much. Thibs runs his guys too hard and doesn't understand that sometimes it's okay to sacrifice a regular season game in order to prepare the team for the playoffs. Instead, Chicago is out of gas by April every year. Until they get rid of the wounded albatross that is Derrick's contract and find a coach that understands the nuances of an 82-game season PLUS playoffs they will win nothing.

[mufan2003]

I know on Dodds' board the gr8one1 felt Doug McDermott would be the best rookie this year, many including myself laughed at him for saying that, but I never expected McDermott to collect splinters on the bench. Like you said brewcity77, Thibs can be too stubborn forcing his starters to play too many minutes. However, that was not the case with Rose. Rose sat himself on back-to-back games and against bad teams to pace himself. Rose was criticized for this, but it was to preserve himself for the playoffs, and he still got hurt.

[TheSultan]

Thibs can get a team from nowhere to somewhere short of the promised land. He can't take them all the way. I think they will be getting rid of him after this year.

[Markedman]

Jimmy didn't get hurt because he played too many minutes....he ran into a pick.....

Could happen to any player at any time.

[Alan Bykowski, "brewcity77"]

Thibs' style worked great when they had the Bench Mob, but salary cap caught up to that. He's one of those guys like Skiles who is great for the turnaround, to deliver results early on, but eventually that 100% all the time mindset is going to grate on guys. I think you can get away with that more in college than the pros where you only have guys for 3-4 years. By the time they get sick of the schtick, they are graduating. Doesn't work that way in the NBA.

Thibs is a great regular season coach but he doesn't understand when to slow down and look at the big picture. You look at someone like Popovich and see that he gets it. He knows when to rest his guys, especially the older ones. I think Chicago will make a change in the offseason. Many will say it's crazy to get rid of such a successful coach, but if they want to bring a title back to that city, they need someone different to do it.