Everything and anything about Derrick Rose continues to incite strong responses.
When he struggles, the walls are closing in, his knees crumbling like cake, his future dark and dreary, toeing the line of hopeless.
When he thrives—even if only for one game, one play or a warmup dunk—clouds part, birds sing, the harrowing reality of failure is left behind, replaced by ironclad optimism and MVP and championship trophies he hasn’t yet won.
This is one of those latter times.
Mike Krzyzewski hasn’t been shy about singing Rose’s praises prior to and during Team USA’s FIBA World Cup run. He has been one of the voices of unwavering optimism, and that hasn’t changed.
Following Rose’s 12-point, five-assist performance during Team USA’s 119-76 victory over Slovenia, Coach K waxed definitiveness, proclaiming there was no doubt Rose would return to form for the Chicago Bulls.
“You could see in his face he was different,” he said, per the Chicago Tribune‘s K.C. Johnson. “I think this starts the journey back to being who he is. It will happen.”
Indeed, there have been some trademark Rose moments, traces of explosion, samples of speed, tastes of dominance and self-assuredness and tacit promises that make his resurgence more fact and formality than possibility. But buying into Rose’s Team USA display, placing stock in fleeting significance—good or bad—remains dangerously shortsighted.
Nothing Rose has done gives an adequate glimpse into his return. That he’s playing at all—though I still believe he should have sat the World Cup out—is encouraging, but it’s hardly telling.
Playing 20 or fewer minutes a night doesn’t measure his durability. Transient displays of scoring and passing and running and flat-out exploding aren’t obvious portends to a successful regular season. Rose still needs to prove that he can adjust and dominate in the NBA, where the competition is fiercer, his role bigger, the stakes higher.
The World Cup is, at best, Rose’s tuneup. It’s him regaining some of his in-game legs, mastering the deliberate strides he must now move with, for fear of re-injuring himself.
It’s him getting a feel for the game he’s spent basically two-plus years away from, nothing more.
None of that means he won’t return just as productive and valuable. It could happen, just like Coach K says. But to say, beyond doubt, that it’s going to happen is just as egregious as those expecting Rose to injure himself again. No one—not you, not me, not Rose himself—can accurately predict what will happen next, when he returns to the NBA, trying to revive his rising star, trying to regain his boundless potential.
In the end, all we know about Rose—as it pertains to his NBA future—is that we know nothing. There is no predicting what the new Rose looks like or how well he fares. There is hoping, there is doubting.
There is no knowing.
Dan Favale is a firm believer in the three-pointer as well as the notion that defense doesn’t always win championships. His musings can be found at Bleacherreport.com in addition to TheHoopDoctors.com.
