Derrick Rose: Grading Each Aspect of the Chicago Guard's Game

Derrick Rose became the youngest MVP in NBA history last year. As such he probably has more room for improvement than any MVP in league history. 

Some are overly critical of him because of the holes in his game, exaggerating them. Others would like to ignore the holes in his game. 

The truth is that Rose became just the 16th player in NBA history to score 2,000 points in a season, and only the second point guard to do so. Only Oscar Robertson had a 2,000 point season and more assists.

In short, Derrick Rose truly did have one of the great seasons by a young player in the history of the league, but he does have aspects of his game that can still use improvement.

In the following slides I'll be evaluating his game piece by piece and addressing the areas where he needs to improve.

Derrick Rose: Grading Each Aspect of the Chicago Guard's Game

Derrick Rose became the youngest MVP in NBA history last year. As such he probably has more room for improvement than any MVP in league history. 

Some are overly critical of him because of the holes in his game, exaggerating them. Others would like to ignore the holes in his game. 

The truth is that Rose became just the 16th player in NBA history to score 2,000 points in a season, and only the second point guard to do so. Only Oscar Robertson had a 2,000 point season and more assists.

In short, Derrick Rose truly did have one of the great seasons by a young player in the history of the league, but he does have aspects of his game that can still use improvement.

In the following slides I'll be evaluating his game piece by piece and addressing the areas where he needs to improve. 

Shot Selection: D

There are those that say that Rose shoots too much, and on that I disagree. However, I think there is the matter of his actual shot selection. 

There's no such thing as too many shots if they are all good shots. If you take 100 shots and they were all good shots, it's not too many. I'll take 100 good shots over 10 bad shots any day of the week. 

Rose takes too many bad shots, and it's one of, if not the single biggest aspect of his game to work on. Now some of that is his on his teammates, giving him the ball with two seconds left on the shot clock when he doesn't have any time to shoot. 

There are two kinds of bad shots he needs to eliminate though which make up the bulk of them. These combine for about five shots per game. 

First there are the times when he brings the ball down the court and just pulls up and shoots without running the offense. Most of those shots don't go in, and there's not much point to them.

Second, there are the times when he tries to force his dribble inside and ends up getting the shot blocked. 

In both cases it's a matter of patience and allowing the play to develop and using the teammates around him. 

Now I want to distinguish between this and what his critics say though. His critics want to portray those as the bulk of his game. It's a small percentage of the shots he takes. Ninety percent of the time he runs the offense the way he should and helps his team. He's not "selfish" or a "ballhog" like his critics argue. 

He just has lapses. If he eliminates those he could easily raise his field goal percentage over 50 percent as the fact is that when he settles down and actually runs the offense, his shots tend to go in. 

Conditioning: C-

The picture above shows everything you need to know. A part of the reason that Rose struggled in the playoffs, and particularly in the finals, has to do with deep conditioning. 

By "deep conditioning" I mean something beyond just being able to have energy at the end of a game and being able to run up and down the court. I mean being able to do so deep into the playoffs. Rose himself has identified this as a target that needs work. 

While Rose needs to work on this in the offseason, he needs to continue in the regular season. To be strong in the playoffs he's going to need to take care of things like his diet and his sleep. 

You can get away with being sloppy about those things for a time, but not deep in the playoffs. Michael Jordan was obsessive over his diet, and that was a part of the reason for his conditioning and success. Rose needs to do more than eliminate spicy foods, he needs to eat healthy. 

Passing: C+

Rose's critics like to refer to him as a "shoot first" point guard. It's a ludicrous description and it's apparent when you watch the Bulls. Rose is a point guard, he brings the ball down, and the first thing he does virtually every time he brings the ball down the court is pass. 

People look at box scores and see him taking shot attempts and assume that means the ball never went into anyone else's hands. That's simply not true. Most of his shots come after the ball has already been in the hands of other players who have then passed the ball back to him. 

Comparing him to the likes of Allen Iverson is just silly. Iverson would take 25 percent more shots than Rose, and that's a high volume shooter. 

Beyond that is the effectiveness of Rose's passing. According to Synergy Sports, Rose's teammates field goal percentage was 54 percent when he passed out of isolation. No point guard in the league had a better result. 

When he was on the court the team's effective field goal percentage was three percent higher than when he was off of it in spite of the fact that the team's most efficient shooter, Kyle Korver, spent more time on the court with Rose on the bench than on the court. 

Simply put Rose made his teammates better through his passing. 

That doesn't mean he doesn't have some things to improve on his passing though. There are two major areas where he can use improvement. 

First, he needs to learn to not be careless with the ball. There are times where he'll flip the ball out to his shooting guard with this kind of slow-floaty kind of pass that is invariably intercepted and becomes a fast-break in the wrong direction. Just being careful would fix that. 

The other thing that he needs to improve on is his passing into the post. The Bulls were dead last in the NBA with the roll man in the pick and roll play last year, which is just mind boggling when you have a pick and roll player like Carlos Boozer on the court. 

Now granted, there were some problems with Boozer's health and conditioning and a part of the blame for that is on that, but some of it has to be shouldered by Rose. How often do you see a good crisp bounce pass from Rose?

It sounds almost too simple, but I think it comes down to that. If Rose can incorporate a good crisp bounce pass through traffic to get the ball to Boozer under the net he could easily add 2-3 assists to his game. In my mind I think it's one of the biggest things he should work on this year. 

Off the Ball Defense: B-

For the most part Rose does a nice job in help defense, particularly in transition situations where he at times is reminiscent of a smaller version of LeBron James in chase down blocks. 

Where he does run into problems sometimes is that there are moments where he is a microsecond behind in help defense or set defenses when there are multiple plays run.

Thibodeau's system is "five men on a string" and requires the team to play together. Every once in a while Rose gets caught out of position and it costs the Bulls points. I think this is more a matter of experience than it is effort or "basketball IQ:" 

This year Rose will have  another year of playing in the system, which means he should improve. He'll also get more notoriety for his defense this year. As such, look for him to make the All-Defense team for the first time in his career this season. 

On the Ball Defense: B+

Defense is an aspect of basketball that doesn't normally get immediate recognition because there' s not much in the traditional box score to reflect it. If a player increases his scoring five points a game you can see it by looking at the league stats. 

If a player cuts the points he allows by five points per game though, it doesn't show up. Therefore defensive recognition becomes a matter of reputation and it takes time for a player's improvement to get recognized.

In his first two years, and in Memphis, Rose was not an aggressive defensive player. It became clear early on that even Derrick Rose was going to need to give full commitment on both ends of the court to get playing time under their new coach Tom Thibodeau when early in the season he was benched against the Knicks. 

After that Rose really brought effort on defense, but it wasn't something you knew unless you watched the Bulls day in and day out. His reputation lagged.   

It's not to say that Rose didn't get any recognition—no player received more votes without making the All-Defense team—but probably he's still an underrated defensive player. 

In some of his high profile games he shut down some of the best point guards in basketball outplaying the likes of Chris Paul, Deron Williams and Russell Westbrook.

Now there are some who point to the performance of Darren Collison in the playoffs and say that Rose was exploited. To call that a complete misrepresentation of reality would be an understatement. In the series Collison scored 47 points on 39 percent shooting.

What's more is that he did open well, hitting on five of his first six shots. Call it nerves but after that first quarter Rose shut down Collison for the rest of the series as he scored only 37 points more in the remaining games and only six of those points came while Rose was guarding him.

For those that want to point to Collison's ankle sprain, they need to remember that Rose was defending him with a more severe ankle sprain. They should also remember that before they criticize Rose's shooting percentage for the remainder of the playoffs.  

Basketball IQ: B+

Here is one of those areas where you need to take a step back and remember Derrick Rose is still very young. When it comes to his "basketball IQ" it's hard to evaluate because of that, plus the fact that last year was the first time in his career where he was actually calling the plays himself.

Thibodeau is more concerned about him running the offense and understanding it than micromanaging it. Before the All-Star Game the Bulls were the 19th most efficient offense in the NBA. After the All-Star Game they were the sixth most efficient offense in the NBA.

Clearly Rose was coming to understand the offense as the season progressed.

One of the more encouraging anecdotes came after Rose was shut down against Golden State by the traps set by Monta Ellis and Steph Curry. Rose called Thibodeau at 1:00 in the morning and peppered him with questions for two hours, running through plays in his head one by one and asking what he should have done.It was after that game that the offense really started to materialize.

There are a number of things to take form that story.  First, it shows that Rose does have a good mind for basketball as he was recalling the entire game in his head. Second, it shows a thirst for knowledge and improvement. Third, it shows the capacity to learn as the results of that conversation were manifest. 

When it comes to understanding the game, Rose is behind the likes of Deron Williams who is four years older than him, and Chris Paul, who is three years his senior. However when compared to his peers, like Russell Westborok, his understanding is a step ahead. 

Ball Handling and Play Making: B

I almost want to grade him an "Oh _______!" here, except that's not a real grade. What I mean by that is when he breaks to the basket you find yourself saying "Oh _______!" for better or worse. Nine times out of 10 it's a "Wow!" or something similar that comes out. 

One time out of 10 though it's something else. 

There's no shortage of plays where he makes a shot at ridiculous angle, touches the moon and then dunks on his descent, or moves eleven different directions in the air before somehow flipping the ball through the rim, those are the good "Oh's." 

Then there's the bad "Oh's" where he either dribbles the ball off his foot, someone else's or just decides the ball is somehow going to magically go through an outstretch defenders hand. 

Eliminating the bad "Oh's," or at least limiting them would elevate his grade to an A. 

Clutch: A-

There are those who want to judge Rose's entire season based on the series against Miami.  This is just as wrong as basing LeBron's entire season on the Finals.  Keep in mind that it was Rose's first trip deep into the playoffs. 

If you want to determine everything about a player "only" averaging 23.7 points per game in five games while he had arguably the best one on one defender in the NBA guarding him and was playing with a grade 2 ankle sprain—an injury that would sideline a lot of players—then I guess there is no defense.

I think that's just being selective and narrow though.  

If however you want to analyze the entire season there's a lot to be said for Rose. He was a +73 in clutch situations on the season. By comparison LeBron James was a +46. Kobe Bryant was a +42. So if Rose isn't clutch I guess they aren't either. 

Rose's 47.8 points per 48 minutes of clutch time play was bettered only by Kobe Bryant's 49.8. However Rose also averaged 10.4 rebounds and 9.8 assists, both roughly two better than Kobe. 

Without question Rose was one of the best, if not the best clutch player in the NBA last season. 

Putting the Eastern Conference Finals performance in it's proper perspective drops his grade from A+ to A-.

Exactly how much he's taken from that experience and grown from it will have to wait for the next postseason to answer.  

Leadership: B+

Derrick Rose is the unquestioned leader of the Bulls which is remarkable considering his age. His team loves him and they follow him. 

The only problem is that sometimes that means the entire team acts like they are 22. While the emotion of the team helped lead them to some huge comebacks it also led to some problems. 

The team waited around for three quarters through most of the Indiana series before deciding to show up and play in the fourth quarter because of nerves. They collapsed in Game 5 against Miami because of nerves. 

While Rose was the leader of the team and deserves a ton of credit for leading his team to the NBA's best record and to the Eastern Conference Finals, he also needs to take the hit for leading them to the mental collapse that came there. 

Having that experience behind him though is a plus. He has taken the experience and grown from it. His own realizations and comments that have come since then are indicative of a boy becoming a man. Look for a decidedly more mature Rose to hit the court next season. 

One on One: A+

Simply put no player in the NBA was better in isolation than Derrick Rose. When he was in isolation he averaged 1.05 points per play, the best of any start. Add to that that he only yielded .64 points per play and the difference is the widest margin of anyone.

As mentioned earlier Rose's teammates shot 54 percent when he passed out of isolation, again, the best result of any pointguard in the NBA. 

As a result the Chicago Bulls were the best team in the NBA at running the isolation play, which is Rose's bread and butter.