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Tom Thibodeau on Derrick Rose's unending injury worries: 'He's got to get out there and play'
Derrick Rose played NBA basketball on Monday night. He suited up for his Chicago Bulls and took part in the team’s too-close 97-95 road win over the Utah Jazz. Rose was far from his MVP-level self, but his performance was 2014-era typical – he scored 18 points on 10 shots, dished five assists, showed some flashes while penetrating in transition but also relied on his 3-of-5 mark from behind the three-point arc to score.
It was Rose’s first game back in 11 days, a week and a half after pulling a hamstring in a win over the Toronto Raptors. Rose has played in just six of his team’s 14 games, dealing with both that hamstring malady and two sprained ankles. This comes on the heels of him missing just about all of the 2012 playoffs, the entire 2012-13 season due to a torn ACL, and all but 10 games of 2013-14 after suffering a torn meniscus.
He doesn’t suffer from recurring injuries, none of these setbacks stems from the same knee, ankle, or hamstring, but he does get injured quite a bit. It’s wearying, whether you’re a Bulls fan or just your typical NBA follower.
Imagine what it must be like to be Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau. From ESPN Chicago’s Nick Friedell:
Asked whether Rose looked fatigued in the second half of Monday's game, something the 26-year-old discussed before Monday's shootaround in regard to his muscle recovery after missing more than a week, Thibodeau chafed.
"Oh, I don't know. Jesus. He's got to get out there and play," Thibodeau said. "I thought he did a lot of good things. You could see he's not real comfortable with the ball yet, but that will come. When Derrick strings some games together, he's going to take off. He's got to go. That's the bottom line. He's got to go."
It should be noted that Pau Gasol, returning from a calf injury that may have been caused due to overuse of the 34-year old, also reported feeling “a little fatigued.” As is usually the case after returning from injury to play in the relatively thin Utah air. Thibodeau is not on record as chafing at Gasol’s remarks.
Players have returned from ACL injuries before after long absences, and players have returned from a torn meniscus setback. What Derrick Rose is doing, however, is unprecedented. The timing of his injuries, from the playoff tear in 2012 to the early-season tear in 2013, have created an odd vacuum that has just about taken him out of NBA action for two years. Toss in an injury-plagued lockout year in 2011-12, one that saw him work through myriad contact injuries, and the on/off work we’ve seen so far in 2014-15, and you have a unique situation that is hard to classify.
Thibodeau’s insistence on Rose stringing some games together is important. Rose’s numbers so far in 2014-15 are quite good, but the Bulls don’t really need him to play at his MVP-level best right now even though Joakim Noah is working back from his own knee surgery, and even as Gasol minds his minutes in anticipation of spring. What they need Rose to do is find a rhythm, so that the instinctual part of his big basketball brain can return to anticipating movement and using his healthy body to take advantage of cracks in the defense.
That will only come with time, and experience. In a lot of ways, the Chicago Bulls are a team that really needs a time machine to quickly take them to April, so as to save the various legs of Noah, Gasol, or even the currently disabled Taj Gibson. If there is any blessing to the drudgery of an 82-game season – Chicago has to play in Denver on Tuesday in the second part of a back-to-back – it’s that Rose can work his way back to prominence in relative anonymity.
The reference to anonymity seems like a cruel joke in the wake of reporters rightfully asking Derrick, his teammates and coaches about his health status at every given chance, but once these games start to string along new subjects will pop up. At some point Derrick Rose will become just another really great NBA player again, but that’s only going to happen after a lengthy spell of healthy games.
In the meantime, every tweak will be scrutinized, every shootaround will be followed closely, and every lift-off in the paint will give both Derrick and his fans a squeamish opportunity for pause. Such is life, when it gets turned on its ear.
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is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
