Derrick Rose Finally Gets the Playoff Test We've Been Waiting for
MILWAUKEE — Derrick Rose won’t have you believe that playing against a LeBron James team in the playoffs carries a little extra weight. He’s done it twice, once in 2010 and once in 2011, and gone home both times.
After the last three years of Rose’s career, which have included three knee surgeries and three missed opportunities at championship runs, he’ll take playing healthy in the second round of the playoffs against any team you care to put in front of him.
“It could've been anybody,” Rose said Thursday after the Chicago Bulls’ 54-point blowout win over the Milwaukee Bucks, which locked up a second-round matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers that will begin Monday. “It could've been my mom. I'm just happy to be playing again.”
The Bucks made them sweat for two games, but Thursday’s rout made one thing clear: Rose and the Bulls were ready to move on to the real test, arguably the biggest test of Rose’s limited postseason career. Finally healthy after years of career-threatening injuries, he will likely never have a better opportunity to finally get past James.
Playing against James has a way of automatically making you an underdog, regardless of context or previous performance. That was true in 2011, when the top-seeded Bulls faced the Miami Heat in James’ first year there in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Even though the Bulls had the better record and the reigning MVP and Coach of the Year, Miami’s march to the Finals felt inevitable. And sure enough, the Heat prevailed in five games.
Things are different now, but that underdog status remains the same. Rose has been to hell and back, and Tom Thibodeau may or may not be coaching for his job.
The Bulls would have entered this series as underdogs against a fully healthy Cleveland roster, but Kevin Love’s season-ending shoulder injury changes the calculus. It gives Chicago not just a fighting chance, but a prime opportunity to take advantage of a weakened version of the Cavs.
But even this weakened version of the Cavs still has LeBron James, and no matter what advantages the Bulls get with Love’s absence, that fact alone means they have to play at the level they played on Thursday seven times to even have a chance. That’s the LeBron effect.
“I'm not gonna sit here and say we have the game plan to stop him,” Rose said of James. “But he's gonna bring it. He's gonna play hard. He's won championships so you gotta give it to him. He's a helluva player. So when we play against him, we just gotta make it tough. Nothing easy for him, make sure he sees bodies.”
This is going to be the biggest series of Rose’s career. With the emergence of Jimmy Butler as the second go-to scorer Rose was missing the last time he played James in the playoffs, James’ defensive energy won’t be entirely on him. But Rose will also be tasked with slowing down Kyrie Irving on defense while keeping pace with him on offense.
This is a Bulls team that should, on paper, be able to match up well with the Cavs, especially this Love-less iteration. They’ll need their health, and they’ll need basically everything to break right. But this is the best chance they’ve had in the Rose era, and he’s as confident in his teammates as he’s ever been.
“When you're in the playoffs, the guys I had on my team in the past, at the time I wouldn't have traded them for anything in the world,” Rose said. “We were in a battle. We just lost to them in a series a couple times. So we get a chance to redeem ourselves and really go out there and compete.”
The Bulls have maybe their best opportunity yet to compete for a title. Succeeding would make everything Rose has been through worth it. But they still have to get past No. 23, and everyone in the locker room knows it.
“That's the way it's been for quite a while now,” Joakim Noah said. “But you know what? I never thought I'd say this, but I'm very excited to go to Cleveland.”
Sean Highkin covers the Chicago Bulls for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @highkin
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