In the midst of Tuesday's press conference to discuss Derrick Rose's recovery from ACL surgery, Bulls general manager Gar Forman dropped an interesting nugget, not that it escaped notice: Tom Thibodeau's option for next season will be exercised by the team.
However, Forman didn't resolve the ongoing saga of whether the Bulls head coach would receive a contract extension in the near future.
"It hasnt changed since we talked, I think it was a month or two ago," Forman said Tuesday at Rush University Medical Center. "Toms option will be picked up and we started having conversations about an extension with him in the fall, and we hope to continue those discussions now that were in the offseason. We value Tom greatly. We values what he brings to the organization, what hes brought to the team. We think hes one of finest coaches in the league and were hopeful that hell be our coach long-term.
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Thibodeau chimed in on the situation: "Im not worried about that. Those things all take care of themselves."
In his first public comments since the Bulls' season ended at the hands of Philadelphia last Thursday, Thibodeau reflected on his team's campaign, which was riddled by injuries and ended in a disappointing first-round playoff exit, though the Bulls again had the league's best regular-season record.
"In the end, there will be one team thats satisfied. As I said at the end of the season, I was disappointed in our loss, but not disappointed in our team. Our team gave everything they had and thats all you can ask of your team, so we fell short and we have to look forward to the challenge next year," he said.
"You dont want to look backwards. You want to obviously learn and move forward. Going into the playoffs, the two things that you have to have is one, you need to be playing well and two, you have to have your health. Those things are critical, so we fell short, but we had a number of guys that were injured and I thought our bench was terrific all year long, and I think we fell short in the end, but overall, I thought our team did fine."
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The notoriously hard-charging coach did say that he'll take some time for himself before returning to the grind of preparing for next season, as well as next month's draft and the summer's free agency.
"I will," he admitted. "Right now, I wanted to be around with Derrick going through this and then, Ill take some time and then, decompress for a week or so, and then get back at it."