The Chicago Bulls’ front office is no longer run by the infamous “GarPax” tandem (Gar Forman and John Paxson), but the current regime is still finding ways to make negative headlines.
San Antonio Spurs forward Thaddeus Young ripped the Bulls this week for the way that they handled trading him. Young went to the Spurs this past offseason as part of the DeMar DeRozan sign-and-trade.
“It definitely caught me off guard,” Young said in an interview with Alex Kennedy of BasketballNews.com. “I actually learned about it in the parking lot of the Sports Academy in Frisco, Texas. I was leaving a session and my phone was going crazy. I’d seen that DeMar DeRozan had gotten traded to Chicago and I was like, ‘Why is my phone going crazy for this?’ Then, I dive a little deeper into it and I see that the trade included me, Al-Farouq Aminu, some picks and stuff like that.
“It definitely caught me off guard for the simple fact that I had just talked to my agent,” the veteran Young added. “My agent had just talked to everybody in Chicago. We were being told that I was coming back. And they guaranteed my salary the day before or two days before or something like that and then used it as trade bait. It is what it is. It happens. It’s part of the business. But the only thing I wish is that I had gotten the heads-up before I found out from social [media]. I was getting ready to gather my family up and get everyone ready and situated to come back to Chicago.”
The 33-year-old Young is a versatile forward who averaged 12.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 4.3 assists per game last season for the Bulls, his second with them. But he is now seeing sparse playing time on a rebuilding Spurs team. Young also expressed displeasure this week with his role in San Antonio.
There is little doubt that the DeRozan acquisition is paying off handsomely for the Bulls. He is averaging a stout 26.3 points per game, and Chicago has roared their way to a 15-8 reord. But Young obviously thinks that the Bulls acted unprofessionally with the way that they traded him. It is not the only criticism that they have faced from a player on last year’s team either.
