The Chicago Bulls rejected the Boston Celtics' offer to trade Jae Crowder and two of their first round picks in the recently concluded 2016 NBA Draft in exchange for Jimmy Butler.
Boston owned three first-round picks and five second-round selections during Thursday night's draft and RealGM indicated that there had been advanced talks that the Celtics offered two of them and Crowder to the Bulls for their All-Star shooting guard.
The report said that the Bulls "held talks with Boston trading for No. 3 with (Providence's Kris) Dunn as the pick along with Jae Crowder and the 16th overall pick for Butler."
However, as it turned out, Chicago turned down the deal and the Celtics went on to draft California's Jaylen Brown as the third overall pick while snagging France's Guerschon Yabusele at no. 16. Dunn slid down as the Minnesota Timberwolves' selection at no. 5.
Bulls general manager Gar Forman insisted that Butler is a valuable player for the club and that they were just listening to offers when Boston approached them for the former Marquette standout.
"We appreciate Jimmy," the GM said. "We value Jimmy. It's our job to listen about any player on our roster when there's interest. And obviously we call teams and express interest in players that they have."
Chat Sports confirmed the report, saying that the Celtics and Bulls "were actively involved in trade discussions that would've sent All-Star Jimmy Butler to the Celtics on draft night".
Chicago allegedly decided to "pull the trigger on the deal" because they did not want to lose Butler and former NBA MVP Derrick Rose, who the team had traded to the New York Knicks last week, in one summer at the same time.
Meanwhile, CSN Chicago reported that Forman was adamant that Butler is not on the Bulls' trading block at the moment.
"We have never made a call in regards to Jimmy Butler," said Forman. "We've talked about, we value Jimmy Butler, we're very happy to have Jimmy Butler."
"We've got a phenomenal basketball player who was an All-Star and All-NBA defender, is still young, obviously we've got him under contract long-term, those are all positive. He, again, is what we want to be. We've said this all along. We like Jimmy Butler, we did not shop Jimmy Butler," he added.