Derrick Rose: The Criticisms and Realities of the Reigning MVP

Derrick Rose won the MVP last year, and in so doing, earned the wrath of a segment of the blogosphere. To them, Rose is an overrated player, a darling of the media and an example of everything that is wrong with the award.

Nary an article or blog entry can go up on Rose or the Bulls without this segment blasting the article with negative comments about Rose. You'd think, from reading these, that Rose isn't even an elite player, much less the NBA's MVP. 

Now, I'll admit, (as some of my readers will attest) that I'm a Bulls fan and a big fan of Derrick Rose's game. I'm not going to hide from that. However, I don't think that means it's impossible to be objective. It does, however, mean that I have an extra responsibility to back up any pro-Rose arguments with substance and facts. 

I have tried to give the criticisms the fairest look I can. I've taken considerable time to look at each criticism in extensive detail. I went through each one as though it were my position and approached it form the angle of trying to prove to myself it were true. I honestly have not found them persuasive with one exception. 

The anti-Rose crowd is also prone to bias though. They vary from the fans of other teams or players to those who just feel that the whole Rose thing got jammed down their throats. These critics have formed a sort of a coalition to collectively bash Rose. They often do not subject themselves to the same level of objectivity. Rather, they surround themselves with like-minded people who affirm everything they say. 

In such cases, there is a danger of a "bubble." A "bubble" occurs when people surround themselves with only other people who agree with them. They sit in their tiny circles patting themselves on the back and never challenging their own findings. In so doing, they convince themselves that they are so right that no other case can ever be made for anything else. 

The purpose of this article is to pop the bubble. When it comes to the MVP award, there's a misguided way of carrying on the debate. It suggests that only one player each year is deserving of the award. The problem is that this is rarely true. The reason there is a debate every year is that every year more than one player deserves to win it. 

The question is, which player is most deserving. Last year, there were about four players, Derrick Rose, Dwight Howard, LeBron James and Dirk Nowitzki who were deserving of the award. Derrick Rose won it, and he was deserving of it. The thing is that I can say that without taking away anything else from any of the other players who were deserving. 

There is the narrative versus the numbers debate. I believe that if you're being fair it's probably a combination of the two. To a point, there's a need for the numbers, but to a point, it's not just the numbers either. 

Derrick Rose led his team to the most wins in the regular season last year in spite of key injuries to two of the best players on the bowl which kept either Carlos Boozer or Joakim Noah out of two thirds of the Bulls games. That's the narrative, and while some argue that Dwight Howard's narrative is even better, most agree that on narrative that Rose is in the conversation. 

Some have gone so far as to argue that he was short on the numbers side of thing though, suggesting he's all narrative. That's not true. That's part of the bubble. That's what needs to be popped. I will address the four major criticism leveled at Rose and establish why he is an elite player in the league, deserving of his MVP award. 

Now, I'll say this first though. I don't think he's the best player in the NBA. At the same time, I don't think the MVP is now, or ever has been, about the best player in the NBA. Sure, many times, it goes to the best player, but not because they are the best player. It goes to them because they are the best player on the best team. 

Rose won, not because he's the best player but because he's the best player on the best team in the regular season. He did a tremendous amount to put his team over the top. I will address what the criticisms and realities of last season were and establish that Rose is an elite player in the NBA, deserving of his award. 

The Criticism: Field Goal Percentage

The most frequent and loudest criticism of Rose has to do with his field goal percentage. He is labeled as a "shoot-first" point guard and a "volume shooter" who relies on excessive shooting to inflate his stats. They argue that Rose attempted the third-most shots of anyone in the NBA last year, and that's far too much shooting from a point guard. 

To hear him described, you would think that Rose was chucking up shots like no other player, much less point guard in NBA history. The reality is that while Rose is a scorer, his shooting bonanza is greatly exaggerated. 

Part of the issue here is that last year's league leaders in shot attempts were considerably down for a number of reasons. Kobe Bryant led the league with 1,639 attempts. That's only the 25th most in the last decade. In fact, only twice in the history of the NBA has a person led the league with fewer shot attempts in an 82 game season. 

In other words, yes, Rose was third in attempts last year, but that's a bit of a misleading characterization. It wasn't a large number of attempts by normal standards. 

In reality, he only attempted 19.7 field goal attempts last year. That's hardly entering into the ball hog conversation. In fact, it ranks him all of 354th in NBA history for "most shots per game." Among those who who have attempted more shots per game is Bob Cousy the father of "pure point guards." 

Rose was only fourth in shots per minute just last year. He averaged 2.2 fewer shots per minute than Kobe Bryant, who led the league, which is almost a 12 percent difference. 

Wilt Chamberlain once attempted 39.5 shots per game. That's more than double what Rose attempted this year. Bryant once attempted 27.2. Iverson attempted 27.8. These are the types of players the smear campaign tries to compare Rose to, players who averaged about 50 percent more than Rose! Frankly, that's just outright dishonest!

Furthermore when you talk about the field goal percentages people tend to inflate the value of a few points difference in field goal percentage. You have to understand that one percent in field goal percentage is the equivalent of less than one shot going in every five games. 

For instance, if you were to compare Bryant's field goal percentage when he won to Rose's from this year, it effectively was the difference between one shot going in every four games, or just 21 shots on the entire season. 

Is that really that dramatic of a difference? Are we bickering over which way the ball rolls one time every four games?

Does Derrick Rose need to improve in his shot selection? Yes. But every player has their warts, even LeBron James and Bryant. If you're going to start pointing at warts, make sure you point at all of them. Inflating the importance of field goal percentage doesn't make a sound case. 

The Reality: Derrick Rose Is an Elite Scorer

Derrick Rose is an elite scorer in the NBA. All the rhetoric about the field goal percentage obfuscates this reality, but he is. He scored 25.0 points per game last year. Certainly, the numbers are there to qualify Rose as an elite scorer.

The critics would have you believe the traditional scoring numbers are inflated, but the reality is that they don't do him justice. The fact is that no player in the NBA, not even Kobe Bryant, created more of his own points than Derrick Rose, and that is what makes Rose an elite scorer. 

There are a lot of arguments which try and distract from what Rose accomplishes on offense and why. Another one is the attempt to mask Rose's speed with arguments like "LeBron James is the fastest player, baseline to baseline, in the NBA."

Whether that's true or not is moot. Most of the NBA isn't played baseline to baseline. There is more to it than who has the best straight away speed. When it comes to the fastest overall player in the NBA, Derrick Rose is faster than James, John Wall or anyone else. 

Now I know that there are people that are going to argue about that, but they probably haven't actually guarded anyone. Dwyane Wade has told me personally that Rose is the fastest player in the NBA, and I'll be taking his word over yours. I'll listen to a man who is an elite defender tell me who the hardest player to guard is first. Take no offense. 

Rose's speed is up there with anyone's baseline to baseline, but where he really shines is three-point line to baseline, and that's where speed matters in the NBA. Additionally, it's not just about his pure speed, but his controlled speed form first step to the rim. 

Rose's first step is so explosive that he breaks down defenses merely faking a first step. His ability to drive through traffic, pull up the ball and then then change direction through the air as he's flying at sonic-boom type speeds is unparalleled. What James is to power and athleticism, Rose is to speed and athleticism.

I am not going to argue that Rose is the best overall scorer in the league; I don't think he is. I will argue that he's in the conversation though. When it comes to creating his own shot and getting to the rim, he's up there with anyone in the league.

Kobe Bryant and Dirk Nowitzki are more complete offensive players. Kevin Durant and Carmelo Anthony are better pure scorers. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade are better at getting into the paint. After that though, I think Rose is as good a scorer as anyone in the NBA. 

The Criticism: Derrick Rose Takes His Teammates out of Rhythm

The critics like to argue that Rose takes his teammates out of rhythm with his excessive shooting. They argue that by taking too many shots, he doesn't allow his teammates to settle into the game and thereby disrupts the game flow and "hurts" his team. 

I have never seen this logic backed by any substantive merit, but I thought I would take a look and see if there was some merit to it anyway. 

I took out my trusty excel machine and input the data of every game by every Chicago Bull this season. I then broke the games into two categories. Those where a player other than Rose scored 20 points or more and those where they did not. 

My reasoning was I wanted to see how different Rose's game was when his teammates were not scoring. If the criticism is true, it should bear out that if Rose is "shooting them out," Rose should have a noticeable uptick in attempts and a corresponding decrease in field goal percentage. 

What I found was the exact opposite though. When Rose teammates were on, he shot less. When they scored over 20 points, he averaged 8.4 assists and attempted18.9 shots making 42.5 percent of them. His teammates shot 49.8 percent.  

When they were off, he averaged 20. 5 shots, 6.6 assists and shot 46.4 percent. His teammates, though, only shot 44.1 percent. His shots only varied by 1.6 attempts, but the biggest difference was not so much in the attempts as it was in the makes.

When his teammates were off, he actually shot better than they did and should be shooting more in those situations. Looking at the difference in his assist totals, it accurately reflects the situation as it really was. Rose fed whoever the hot hand was, and that includes when he was the hot hand.

The second thing I looked at was when the shots came. Rose played about three fewer minutes on average in the fourth quarter than in the first but attempted about the same number of shots based on data from Stats Cube (which is unfortunately down right now), though he played about three more minutes in the first quarter than the fourth. 

This indicates that the rate at which he shot was more in the fourth quarter than in the first. This is strengthened by the fact that based on the clutch time data provided by 82games.com, Rose shot at twice the rate in the last five minutes of close games as earlier in the game. 

This shows that it was not Rose shooting his teammates out of the game, but shooting them back into the game. Those "extra" shots came at the end of the game, not the beginning of them, and they were putting the Bulls into the game, not out of them. 

Finally, there is when he takes the shot in the shot clock. Again based on the data provided by 82games.com, he took about 40 percent of his shots in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock. That's similar to the numbers of "pure" point guards like Chris Paul and Deron Williams.

Of that 40 percent, 29 percent were assisted. When you combine that with Rose's usage rate, it shows that only about one out of 10 times does Rose shoot the ball without passing first. It should also be noted that his effective field goal percentage is highest when he is shooting early in the shot clock.

Furthermore, 35 percent of his shots come in "crunch time" or the last six seconds of the shot clock, and that constitutes for the second biggest chunk of his scoring and the lowest success rate. In other words, he's getting tossed the ball as the shot clock runs out and is being asked to bail out his team.

Both the fact that more of his shots are coming at the end of the shot clock, and at the end of the game, suggests that it is not the case that he's "disrupting" the offense. In fact, he's bailing it out in both cases. There are going to be those who accurately say "statistics don't mean everything."

They don't. Anyone who watched the Bulls knows that it was Rose routinely strapping the team on his back in the last five minutes of the game and carrying it or bailing them out as the last few seconds ticked off the shot clock. The fact is that the stats don't begin to tell that story. 

The Reality: Derrick Rose Makes His Teammates Better

In the Bulls second game against the Heat in Chicago in the regular season, with the game on the line, Rose was driving to the rim with LeBron James guarding him. Dwyane Wade came off Luol Deng to help. Rose flipped the ball out to a wide-open Deng who drained the game winning three. 

Sure, Miami ended up having the last laugh, but the play still serves to demonstrate how Rose makes his teammates better. He is such a threat to get to the rim that when he starts breaking for the rim, it draws so much attention. It's as though a giant invisible hand is crushing the opponents defense, squeezing it towards the rim. 

When Rose breaks for the rim or fakes that, he's going to break, and the opponent's defense collapses to stop him; that has the effect of leaving his teammates wide open. When he passes to his teammates out of isolation, their field goal percentage goes up six percentage points, from 48 percent to 54 percent. '

His teammates score 1.125 points per play when he passes out of isolation, an amazing number when you are talking about an offensive efficiency coming out of a set offense. In fact, those numbers are closer to what you would expect from a transition offense. 

If you can't appreciate the significance of that number, then you have no knowledge of basketball. That is the very definition of making your teammates better, and no, not even Chris Paul or Rajon Rondo have the same kind of effect. 

Furthermore, Rose sees a 13 percent bump in his assist numbers when you factor in assist plus,(which accounts for assists leading ot threes) trailing only Steve Nash, and apart from Korver, whom Rose didn't spend a lot of time on the court with, Rose didn't have any great three point shooters on the team. 

Rose not only does not "disrupt" his teammates, he makes them better. 

The Criticism: He Choked in the Postseason

I will concede that this is the fairest criticism. Rose did not have the best postseason. However, he did not have the worst either, and it is a far cry better than what the critics would have you believe. They want to define Rose's postseason entirely by its faults, not evenly weighing the good with the bad. 

While he had some spectacular games, he also had some horrible games. The critics like to forget about the spectacular games and the good things though. 

The bottom line is that Rose average .396 from the field. That's bad. He also averaged 7.7 assists. That's decent. He averaged .828 form the stripe. That's outstanding. He averaged 27.7 points. That's also outstanding and the third highest in the postseason.

He got shut down by LeBron James in the fourth quarter of the Eastern Conference finals, true. He was playing in the Eastern Conference finals though, and that's also true. They say he struggled against Indiana and Atlanta, but he got past them. 

He shot horribly. His teammates weren't doing much better. Luol Deng was .424 from the field. Carlos Boozer was .436. Kyle Korver was .388. Joakim Noah was .411. My point is that the bad shooting was a team plague and not all of it was Rose's fault. 

Is it fair to address some criticism on his postseason? Yes. Is it fair to act as though his postseason was a failure? Absolutely not. He still led his team to the conference finals at just 22 years old. 

The biggest problem he had was he tried too hard. He pressed too much. He tried to do more than he was capable of doing. His shooting was up 25 percent from the regular season, and I think to a point that did take his teammates out of their game. 

He was tired; something he admitted to after the series. He was injured, and that was affecting him more than he'll ever admit to. Those two things were killing his jump shot. Even when he got to the rim, he didn't have the same explosiveness he'd had all season. 

Bulls fans should be encouraged that he has really set his eyes on improving his conditioning this offseason. He's set to learning on how to score on players who are bigger than him. He is working more on his three-point shot. He's improving on literally every flaw that kept the Bulls from getting past Miami last year. 

Rose might have the same kind of improvement this year that he did last year, and if he does, watch out world. Rose is not a finished project. He's a player who is developing and improving dramatically every year. 

Give me a 22-year-old player whose biggest flaw is trying too hard and presses in the postseason over a 26-year-old whose biggest flaw is not trying hard enough and shrinking in the clutch though. Rose will grow form his mistakes, and that's all  the difference in the world. 

The Reality: Derrick Rose Was the Most Clutch Player in the NBA Last Season

Time and time again last year, Derrick Rose stepped up in the clutch. In fact, you can make the argument that he was the most clutch player in the NBA last year. 

First, he either scored or assisted on the most shots to extend or win a game on the final shot. He made a three-point shot against Houston to send the game into overtime.

He sank a pair of free throws against Phoenix to send the game into overtime. He then made a layup in the same game with a tenth of a second left to send it into a second overtime. 

He made the last 12 points in a game against Indiana, including three straight from the stripe with no time on the clock to extend a game in Indiana. 

On two occasions, he had the game winning assist. 

No player in the NBA had more success with the game on the line last season than Rose. 

The same is true with "clutch-time stats" kept by 82games.com. With five minutes left in the game or in overtime and the game within five points, Derrick Rose had a total stats line (points, assists and rebounds) of 68.0 per 48 miutes. That was the highest of any player in the NBA with more than 100 minutes of clutch-time stats.  

He also produced 68.3 points per 48 minutes, again the most in the NBA. 

He also created 19.48 field goals for himself per 48 minutes, again the most of any player in the NBA. 

Whatever Rose's failings were in the fourth quarter against Miami in the ECF, it doesn't take away any of that. The critics need to look at things in totality, not merely propping 15 minutes of bad play and holding it over everything else that Rose did last season. 

The Criticism: The Chicago Bulls Win Because of Defense, Not Because of Rose

The critics love to point to Derrick Rose's defense and argue that the Bulls are a better defensive team when he is on the bench than when he is on the court. This is really a horrible and misleading use of on/off stats, and honestly, some of the people who are using that stat to "prove" his defensive liability should know better. 

In fact, one of the main critics, John Hollinger, used precisely that measure to discredit Rose's defense. However, when he named Joakim Noah as the backup center on his All-Defense team, he dismissed the exact same phenomena because of the Bulls spectacular "Bench Mob" defense. 

When using on/off stats, people have to be very careful. The fact is that not all other things are constants when you are looking at on/off stats. Normally, the majority of bench players are on the court at the same time. Furthermore, the other team is also putting their bench players on the court at the same time too. 

Essentially, the argument comes down to "Derrick Rose is a bad defender because the Bulls bench gives up fewer points to the other team's bench than the starters give up to the other team's starters." When you couple that with the fact that Rose is in the five-man unit that gives up the fewest points per 100 possessions of any starting five-man rotation, the argument looks even more shallow. 

In fact, when you look at the defensive stats when Rose is on the court with the bench, the Bulls give up even fewer points than when his backup, CJ Watson is on the court with the bench. 

This criticism isn't just flawed, it's deliberately skewed by some of the critics who know better and state elsewhere that they know better, which makes it outright dishonest. 

The Reality: Derrick Rose Makes the Bulls a Better Defensive Team

The critics like to point to Tom Thibodeau as the real reason for the Bulls success. In part, this is obviously true. Thibs is a defensive genius; arguably, he's the best defensive mind in basketball. In fact, it's hard to find who else might be in that architect.

If you need any evidence, he designed the two best defenses in the NBA last year. His new team, the Bulls were first, and his old team, the Celtics, were second in defensive rating. 

Synergy Sports tracks literally every play of every game. They assign the defensive person responsible on every single play, based on the primary defender on every play. Based on their data, Derrick Rose was the best starting point guard in terms of points per play against and in terms of field goal percentage against. 

There are those who want to point to the system and arbitrarily dismiss Rose's statistical dominance as "just Thibodeau's system." They want to argue that the only reason Rose is so "successful" is all the help on defense that he gets. 

This is either a failure to understand how Rose plays defense, a failure to understand how Thibodeau's system works or both. The reality is that the defense "all starts with Derrick Rose" and those aren't my words, they are Thibodeau's! Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest to you that Thibodeau knows more about his system than the critics do. 

Rather than just reflexively dismiss that as the supportive comments of a coach trying to prop up his player, consider why he might have said that. His system is best described as "five men on a string." Wherever the ball is, "string" moves along forming a kind of moving wall along the perimeter. 

The middle man in that string on the top is Derrick Rose. He has a tremendous area of court he defends with the system the way it is. Draw in your head a picture of the basketball court. Take a point at the bottom of the circle and then draw a triangle going form there to 10:00 and 2:00 at the three-point line. 

When his man does not have the ball, Rose's job is to drop back to the bottom of the circle and defend that entire area. He does more of that "moving" than anyone else and has the widest range to cover defensively. It's because of his tremendous speed and athleticism, along with his 40-inch vertical that he does it so well. 

Rose yields just .78 points per play on defense, which is lower than any starting point guard in the NBA and the only guard period who plays significant time in the NBA period with a lower points per play average is Tony Allen of the Memphis Grizzlies. 

Furthermore, Rose gives up a field goal percentage of just 37.9 percent, (compared with Allen's 34.3 percent) again the lowest of any point guard in the NBA. He only fouls 5.3 percent of the time (compared with Allen's 7.9 percent of the time) and forces the turnover 13.2 percent of the time (compared with Allen's 12.3 percent).

Furthermore, Rose set an NBA record for point guards with 51 blocks this season. 

These are not just the benefits of playing in the system he plays in. He's making the system work, not the other way around, and that's why his defensive numbers are better than any of the guards on the Bulls. When the ball gets passed to the perimeter, he absolutely explodes to the shooter and challenges every shot. 

Derrick Rose is an elite defensive player, and next year, he'll be on the NBA's All-Defensive team. 

The Reality: Derrick Rose Is an Elite Player

The fact is that in spite of all the criticisms, Derrick Rose is an elite player in the NBA. He's an elite scorer, he's an elite passer and he's an elite defender. He makes his team better. He led the team to the Eastern Conference finals at just 22 years of age and the best record in the NBA. 

If, as I expect they will, the Bulls add a shooting guard upgrade in the offseason (perhaps Ben Gordon?), they will be a better team than the Miami Heat (depending on the changes that the Heat make too). This should help take some pressure off of him, and it should also help him boost his assist numbers slightly. 

Rose will be an even better player next year (if there is one) than he was last year. I was of the opinion that he would not be able to win the MVP again next year as he won't have the narrative in his favor, but seeing what he's been working on in the offseason, he'll be able to be even better next year than he was last year. 

Expect him to be a more efficient scorer as he is learning to draw more contact when he shoots. Additionally, he's determined to get his three-point percentage to over 40 percent. If he gets that there, he'll be absolutely unguardable. Furthermore, he's working on scoring on bigger players and posting up.

I believe that Rose will score around 28 points with nine assists and five boards next year while maintaining a higher effective field goal percentage around 50 percent and getting to the stripe more often. He will also be first or second team All-Defense.  If he is able to post numbers like that, he won't need narrative to support the argument for his MVP. He'll be in the conversation for best player in the league.