Tom Thibodeau Unhappy With Derrick Rose’s Zero Free Throws vs Cavs

The Chicago Bulls earned a split with the Cleveland Cavaliers after the first two battles of their second-round Playoff series, and now the mind games with the officials have begun.

Derrick Rose has yet to visit the free-throw line against the Cavs—that’s three games in a row now that Rose hasn’t attempted a free-throw—but he’s trying to be diplomatic about the the whole thing.

Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau isn’t thrilled about the refs swallowing their whistles each time Rose attacks the tin.

Kyrie Irving, by comparison, has taken twenty-one freebies so far in the series.

Per ESPN:

After failing to get to the line again during Wednesday night’s 106-91 Game 2 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau expressed his displeasure with the recent turn of events. […] “I guess he’s got to go harder, I don’t know,” Thibodeau said after a long pause. “It looks like there’s a lot of contact to me. But obviously others don’t see it that way.”

 

“I can’t think about that,” Rose said. “I don’t even want to talk about that. But I’m playing, and if they’re not calling it, they’re just not calling it. I can’t be worried about (that).”

 

“He’s still working his way back,” Thibodeau said. “And tonight we didn’t make shots — and I want him to trust the pass, he had 10 assists, but the defense and the rebounding was the problem early on. We missed some shots and we didn’t take care of the ball in the first quarter. You put that team in the open floor and they get some confidence going, LeBron has a big game, and they start making threes, so we put ourselves in a big hole.”