Aw, how cute. You actually thought Thibodeau would baby these boys and abandon his next man up mentality? As much as it would make sense to play the nurturing mother babying her child after a fall on his bike, Thibs will always be the dad that brushes the dirt off and tells him to get his butt back on and keep riding!
“Whatever it might be, you have to be ready to adapt and adapt quickly. That’s why it’s a team sport. So if one guy goes out, you expect the next guy to step in and get the job done, and I think that’s the mindset that you have to have,” Thibodeau said.
As fans we have to be prepared for this kind of tough love and realize it is just who Thibodeau is. Sure, the Bulls will be a little cautious with Rose and Noah, but I’d question their intelligence if they weren’t.
One way Thibodeau plans to get past the bumps and bruises of an NBA season is to preach mental toughness.
“I think to be successful in this league, you have to have a lot of mental toughness and it’s a physical league, and you’re going to get hit and there’s going to be soreness, and you have to get through all that stuff,” says Thibodeau. “I think the way you train and the way you prepare are important.”
This sort of mentality, along with the promise to push the ball, is the reason Bulls players have been working extraordinary hard in this off season on conditioning and adding muscle.
Besides, the versatility of this team combined with the addition of Dunleavy will give Thibodeau a little more trust in his bench. In return, the starters will be able to get some rest.
Now we just have to hope that mental toughness can overcome Noah’s chronic plantar fasciitis or Hinrich’s chronic wake-up-out-of-bed-injured disease.
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