Bulls Tom Thibodeau frustrated with Bynum Trade

On Monday night, the Cleveland Cavaliers agreed to trade Andrew Bynum to the Chicago Bulls for Luol Deng. As expected, Bynum was waived by the Bulls on Tuesday. Its now being reported by ESPN Chicago, that head coach Tom Thibodeau is not too happy with the trade, which sent one of his favorite players, Luol Deng to the Cavaliers.

Bulls vice president John Paxson insist that the front office has a "really good" relationship with its coach, and had this to say:

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"Look, it's not realistic to ask Tom or his staff to be happy about taking a player of Lu's caliber off your team," Paxson said Tuesday. "[General manager] Gar [Forman] and I put ourselves in Tom's shoes a lot. Every day, really. And we know what he's facing. We're not sitting up here saying be happy about it. It's hard. It's difficult. But what has to happen within an organization is that when decisions are made, that as a group you have to align together, and you have to move forward. And our focus now has to be on how best to take advantage of what we've just done. That's the challenge -- and Tom's going to be a part of that process with us. That's how this works."

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Here's Thibodeau's take on the trade:

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"I had a chance to voice my opinion," Thibodeau said of his meeting with the front office before the trade was made. "Their job is to make financial decisions, to make player personnel decisions, and things of that nature. Their job is to do that. My job is to coach the guys that are here. That's the way it works."

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Long story short, it sounds like the Chicago Bulls are getting ready to rebuild for the future around injured star Derek Rose. Waiving Bynum enables the Bulls to get below the luxury-tax threshold. That, and also not having to pay Deng the balance of his $14.3 million salary, will save the team more than $20 million.