With Derrick Rose Back, Bulls Coach Tom Thibodeau Now Faces Colossal Task
Here’s the good news: Derrick Rose played in an NBA game Wednesday night. Barring a setback, he will play in another NBA game on Thursday, and then three more before the end of the regular season.
But as the newly healthy Rose and the Chicago Bulls head into the final week of the regular season, they don’t have the luxury that many other playoff-bound teams do. The Atlanta Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers already have the top two seeds in the Eastern Conference locked up. They’ll likely be resting their most important players until the postseason begins. That’s something you can do when you have the luxury of relative good health and stability.
But the Bulls? They’ll have a different agenda for the stretch run. Tom Thibodeau is in a time crunch the rest of the way to make a collection of pieces fit together that he hasn’t had all in one place for much of the year. The most important of those pieces is a player feeling his way back from a third knee surgery in as many years, who now has one week to put together something resembling the continuity and confidence that comes with having games under his belt.
It’s no easy task—not for Rose, not for Thibodeau, not for any of the Bulls players who have grown used to the shuffling of healthy players over the course of the season. But if the title hopes the organization and locker room still hold onto from training camp are going to become reality, they’ll have to find a way to make that happen.
How did Rose look in Wednesday’s 105-103 loss to the Orlando Magic? It wasn’t his best game of the season, but certainly not his worst. That honor goes to his 1-of-13 performance against the Bucks two days before his knee surgery. A couple of impressive drives aside, the rust was evident in his return. He had twice as many turnovers (four) as assists (two). He shot 1-of-6 from three-point range and 3-of-9 overall, finishing with nine points in 19 minutes.
In other words, he looked like someone who hasn’t played basketball in six weeks. Since Rose returned to practice last week, Thibodeau has stressed that it will take time for him to get his conditioning back. He’s also stressed that Rose can’t start that process until he starts playing in games again. He did that Wednesday, and if the results were mixed, it’s at least the start of something.
“I thought the first quarter was very good,” Thibodeau said after the game (via the Chicago Sun-Times). “I thought he got a little winded, to be expected, but it gives us a baseline and we go from there.”
Rose has a lot of catching up to do before the playoffs begin next weekend, and his performances start counting for something bigger than getting reps. A couple of performances like this one in the playoffs could be the difference between a first-round exit and a deep postseason run. Rose’s job, and the job of his teammates and coach, is to use the last four games of the regular season to get as comfortable as possible.
That means getting Rose used to playing with teammates and lineups he doesn’t normally share the court with. Nikola Mirotic had an outstanding March in Rose’s absence, and playing the rookie with Rose could help provide the room Rose needs to go to work from mid-range and at the rim. They’ve been a successful pairing in limited court time together, posting a 3.7 net rating, per NBA.com. But they’ve played just 247 minutes together all season.
Even with Rose back, Thibodeau still has some figuring out of his rotations to do. Wednesday’s game was just the fourth time this season where the Bulls had their entire roster available, and the 20th with their normal starting lineup.
Rose is limited, for the time being, to around 20 minutes a night. Joakim Noah is still limited to 32. It’s unclear whether either of those limits will be lifted by the training staff when the playoffs start. Re-acclimating a player as important as Rose with this little time left is a tough coaching feat under the best of circumstances. Further handcuff him with a minutes limit and the juggling act becomes all the more dangerous.
But that’s the Bulls’ reality. Injuries have made this year a series of stops and starts, and everyone involved has handled the revolving door of injuries about as well as could be expected. That’s all well and good when there’s time for them to feel their way back from adversity.
In the playoffs, that time to ease back will have run out. The Bulls need Rose at his best to go as far as they believe they can. And they have one more week to help him get there.
Sean Highkin covers the Chicago Bulls for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter at @highkin
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