At about 8 p.m. on Tuesday evening, the tweets started to roll in. Lebron James, John Wall, DeAndre Jordan Paul George, John Calipari, and many other big names in the professional basketball world took to Twitter to lament yet another knee injury to of one of the NBA’s great superstars. News that Derrick Rose would require surgery for a medial tear in his right knee was sobering news for the NBA as a whole, and his Chicago Bulls team that seemed to be hitting it’s mid-season stride. In a weak Eastern Conference, the new-look Bulls, featuring Jimmy Butler, Aaron Brooks, and Pau Gasol were scrambling their way up the standings. Prior to Rose’s injury, Chicago was 35-22 and sitting at the number-one spot in the Central Division. The loss of Rose certainly stings Tom Thibodeau’s club, but this is a situation they have seem themselves in countless times since Rose’s 2010-11 MVP campaign.
Rose, as my brother used to say about Redskins running-back Clinton Portis, appears to be made of glass. Over the past four seasons, Rose has missed time due to a sprained toe, strained back, groin injury, ankle injury, torn ACL, torn meniscus and a hamstring injury. It has become an all-too-common sight to see Rose dressed in street clothes, watching morosely as his team plays average basketball, clearly missing his spark. As reported by ESPN on Tuesday, February 24, Rose appeared in 99 percent of Bulls games in his MVP season; however, since then, he has appeared in only 33 percent of Chicago games.
Rose’s presence over the past three years has been felt, in large part, through major Adidas marketing campaigns detailing his comeback. The Youtube and TV series of ads show a determined and sweaty Rose, teeth gritted, willing his way back onto the basketball court. Dubbed “The Return,” the series enthralled me and made me a fan of Rose. I wanted to see this Chicago-native succeed again, regain his former glory. How poignant a story it could be: the Simeon High School product, rising to greatness in his hometown.
The story seemed to come to fruition during his 2010-11 season, when he became the league’s youngest MVP ever at 22 years old. In 2010-11 Rose averaged 25.0 points, 7.7 assists, and shot almost 45 percent from the field. What I will remember most vividly from Rose’s MVP season was his December 23 dunk against the Phoenix Suns. With 24 seconds left, the Bulls had clinched the win, no question, but a fast break materialized with Rose leading the pack. Goran Dragic, a decent Slovenian point guard followed Rose to the basket and attempted to alter Rose’s path to the basket. Without a moments notice, Rose lifted off the ground as if ripped upwards by a string attached to his head. As he sailed towards the basket, he thrust the ball behind his head and kissed it to the “1” on the back of his jersey, showing off a little perhaps. Fans stood stunned as Rose flushed the ball through the basket, undoubtedly with enough force to make a few exiting fans look to the megatron for a replay. Stacey King, the Bulls color commentator, exclaimed after the dunk, “Did you not get the memo?! Derrick Rose can go upstairs! I wanna go higher!” The call was the perfect accent on a mind-blowing dunk.
It was plays like these that first brought Rose into the MVP conversation. His explosiveness was a hallmark of his game since his college days at Memphis, where as a freshman he led the Wildcats to the National Championship before falling to Kansas in OT. Rose played like there were hot coals in the soles of his shoes. His feet danced across the floor, never staying still, ready at any moment to explode into the stratosphere and embarrass an opponent. Rose, in his prime, seemed to hover in the air longer than every other player around the basket. He would wait for his opponents to drop back to Earth as he electrified television across the country.
Sadly, the days of this Rose are over. With this knee injury, it may be time to say goodbye to Rose as the force of nature he was four years ago. The statistical signs have begun to emerge this season that Rose is no longer an integral part of the Bull’s squad. The Bulls are 29-17 with Rose this season, compared to 7-4 without him. The Bulls defensive and offensive efficiency are almost exactly equal sans Rose as with him. Most tellingly perhaps is Rose’s performance in clutch time, despite having taken 25 more shots than both Pau Gasol and Jimmy Butler in close games (five point games, five or less minutes left) he has produced 12 less points than Butler, and 24 less than Gasol. This statistic is especially worrying considering that Rose was Chicago’s go-to player in clutch time for a majority of his career. According to NBA Roundtable from a 2011 article, Rose was the most effective overtime and last-five-minutes-player in the league.
Along with Rose, the NBA has lost a bevy of superstars this season. Kobe Bryant, Chris Bosh, Paul George, and Carmelo Anthony have fallen to season-ending injuries. Rose seems to be the latest playmaker to be so cruelly ripped from the game he loves.
For the foreseeable future, Derrick Rose will be once again banished to the Bulls bench. It is hard to tell the future, but I have a hard time seeing Rose having any more sustained success similar to 2010-11. With any luck, Rose will read this article, and many others like it across the country, and rekindle his ferocious competitive spirit. I look forward to seeing Rose return to the court and bless us with his incredible quickness and prowess, but it’s possible this image is fading quickly, struggling to survive on surgically engineered knees.