With Rose finally back, Bulls can get back to being the Bulls

CHICAGO -- What, really, could Spike Lee say?

The lifelong Knicks fan had traveled to the Madhouse on Madison to see his team play the Bulls in Chicago's home opener Thursday. He had sat, quietly, for most of the evening, as the Bulls controlled New York for three quarters. And, then, the Knicks ground their way back into the game, with Tyson Chandler backtapping offensive rebounds left and right, and the Knicks starting to make threes. All of a sudden, Lee could be hyped at the possibility that the Knicks could steal a road win over one of the East's elite teams. After Chandler made a free throw with 10.8 seconds left, New York was up one. It was here, though, that Derrick Rose decided to be That Dude again.

Rose was 6-of-22 to that point, still working off the rust from missing 18 months rehabbing his torn left ACL. But he didn't hesitate to go baseline on Knicks guard Ray Felton, starting his trademark floater over Felton -- and, then, Chandler, who came over to help. Rose's shot was a parabola, bringing down moisture as it fell from its apex.

And, as it was wet, it splashed through the hoop. Bulls win.

"Chandler's 7 feet tall," Lee lamented afterward as he walked off the court. As in, as they say back where Spike is from, whaddayagonnado?

Derrick Rose is back. He is not yet the Rose that was the league's MVP in 2011. Through three games, Rose is shooting just 29 percent (15-of-52) from the floor. And in the 24-hour culture, a 1-2 record to start the season will no doubt cause all kinds of guarded talk in this city about whether he will get back to his old form.

But after 18 months of waiting, the Bulls will take the Rose they have now and wait for the old one to find his way. The drama of last spring -- when Rose was criticized by fans and questioned by some for not pushing himself to play at the end of the regular season or playoffs -- was long forgotten.

There is no part of him, Rose insists, that wanted to lash back.

"That's when you hold grudges against people," Rose said last week. "For me, this whole process has allowed me not to judge people. You see how everybody's going to have their own opinion. Of course, all of them are not going to be what you want to hear. But you can't get mad at people. So, for me, just try to stay far away from it and do my job, which is to go out there, play basketball, and try to win every night."

With Rose back, Chicago, a defensive rock under Tom Thibodeau every season, can now resume dreams of dismantling the Heat's parade float, 12 Blutarskies waiting to jump into the fray. They can win games in the 80s, but unless Rose is consistently shooting a great percentage from the floor or living at the line, the margin of error for such games for the Bulls is razor-thin.

With Joakim Noah also working his way back after missing all of this preseason with a groin pull, it'll likely take much of November for the Bulls' starting five to get back its timing. Once they get a few practices under their collective belt, it'll go more smoothly.

"He makes it easier for all of us," Carlos Boozer said. "He draws so much attention. The reason I had my points (31 against Miami in Tuesday's opening game loss) is because they had so much attention on Derrick. It's that simple. They double-teamed him every time he touched the ball and they made us make plays. We'll probably see that for a lot of other teams, too."

Rose's slow beginning should put to rest, forever, the arguments made by fans and some in the local media last spring that Rose was some kind of villain for not playing at the end of the regular season or the playoffs while Chicago's remaining players gutted their way to a memorable seven-game triumph over Brooklyn in the first round and gave the Heat five tough games in the semifinals before falling.

Because neither Rose's camp, led by his agent and brother, Reggie, nor the Bulls officially ruled him out for the playoffs, seeing Rose work out before games, looking perfectly fine to anyone who wasn't a doctor, seemed the ultimate tease.

In retrospect, the idea that Rose would come right back to his MVP self is as preposterous now as it was last spring, when the whispering campaign was at its height. Rose was expected -- commanded -- to come back without the benefit of training camp, an offseason to get his conditioning and timing back and without disrupting his teammates, who had just spent the entire season learning how to play without him.

Yet with the benefit of all of those things over the last few months, Rose has stalled out of the gate.

He's missed easy shots that he made in his sleep his first two-plus seasons, especially at the rim, through contact -- the toughest shot to master. He's turned the ball over almost twice as much (5.7 per game, including eight turnovers against Philadelphia Saturday) as his career average.

He was, as ever, willing to pass, but his teammates haven't had to play off of him since April, 2012.

"We've got to get used to him having the ball in his hands," Luol Deng said Thursday. "We played a lot off of Jo at the elbow, a lot of cuts and stuff, last year. It'll come. We still, the second unit comes in, we still run the same stuff, with Kirk [Hinrich]. We were familiar with him. I think his timing will come. We really, not that you ever want a guy to be hurt, but all of us kind of stepped up our game when he wasn't there."

Well, they tried to. The Bulls were in the bottom 10 in just about all of the traditional (points per game, field-goal percentage) and advanced (effective field-goal percentage, offensive rating) offensive statistics last season. Chicago's best offense during the playoffs was giving the ball to Nate Robinson and waiting for him to do something amazing. (Which, often, he did.)

But the Bulls, for the second straight summer, let their key bench guys walk. Robinson went to the Nuggets, replaced, essentially, by free agent Mike Dunleavy, Jr. And Marco Belinelli, who started some last season but who could have been a solid player off the bench for the Bulls this season with Jimmy Butler's emergence at the two, went to the Spurs.

The Bulls continue walking a fine line when it comes to their present and near future. The summer of 2014 is where Chicago is likely to make its franchise-solidifying move, having positioned itself to have significant cap room by using its still-available amnesty provision -- almost certainly on Boozer, which would wipe his $16.8 million off the books -- and by letting Deng walk in free agency.

That would let the Bulls bring in a third star to play with Rose and Noah, while still having Butler on his rookie deal, Taj Gibson in the midst of the $33 million extension he got last year and, probably, European import Nikola Mirotic coming over from Spain to replace Boozer. Depending on who is brought in, Butler can play either wing spot. You will not, however, hear about Rose and any little black books of his that he plans to use to recruit. He won't go begging anyone to come help him win a title.

It's why no one thought twice about Rose taking the last shot Thursday, despite his struggles.

"He has a lot of confidence," Thibodeau said. "He had the courage to take and make on the last play."

Rose didn't feel like himself again until the summer. He went through three-a-days in California under the eye of longtime personal trainer Rob McClanaghan, and the knee held up without swelling. Rose gave up wheat-based products and stopped eating candy, the genesis of his nickname, "Pooh" (as in, Winnie The).

All the time, it was something different," Rose said of the workouts, "a whole different type of training. Really using my legs, working on my agility. I had to get used to lifting again. After I got out of college, I wasn't used to lifting. Going back to that, and letting my body get used to it ... everything you can think of, tires, all kinds of new stuff."

Chicago anticipates Butler, who came on strong toward the end of last season, will pick up at least some of the scoring slack the year -- though Butler, the Bulls' first-rounder in 2011, hasn't played much with Rose. But Butler knows how to get a comfort level with Rose, who's famously been killing in practice since February, quickly.

"Just run, and spot up," Butler said. "I feel like when he gets in the open floor, you just try to keep up with him. He's fast, but you get out there, and if he puts it up on the glass, get ready to rebound, or he'll hit you, hit the open guy. Just get out on the open floor."

But it will likely be a work in progress for the first half of the season. Thibodeau, famous for planning each day of the season to come months in advance, doesn't know when his starters will be able to get extended practices together now that the season is under way. (He also chafes at the notion that he plays Rose, Deng, Boozer and Noah too many minutes; another Bulls coach of recent vintage also played fellows named Jordan and Pippen more than 40 minutes during their primes, as I recall.)

Miami showed the template of how to defend Rose in the season opener, meeting Rose almost as he crossed midcourt, showing hard on every screen and roll to make him give up the ball. Miami is unique in its defensive abilities, to be sure; few teams have wing defenders as capable as LeBron and Dwyane Wade, or a big as agile as Chris Bosh.

"We'll see them again," Deng said. "That first game, they were more aggressive than we were. I think they jumped on us and double-teamed every screen, took us out of our rhythm a little bit."

Of course, much was made of James saying the Bulls don't like Miami, and vice versa. That's talk radio hyperbole; in this era of shared agents and agencies, commercials and the like, there's as much hate between NBA superstars as there is between Miss America contestants (though I thought Miss Iowa was cutting her eyes at Miss North Dakota last year).

You ask Rose if he hates the Heat, and he doesn't seem to understand the question. "I mean, they got something we want," Rose says. He views James, and the Heat, as fellow competitors, neither to be despised when opponents in June, nor to be coddled and massaged when free agents in July.

The Bulls, in the World According to Derrick Rose, always have enough.

"I'm just happy to be back on the court," he said, "playing with a bunch of guys that take the game seriously, playing with just one goal, and that's to win a championship."

Play of the Day

Derrick Rose drives and sinks the game-winning floater over two Knicks defenders with 05.7 seconds remaining in the regulation.

Inside Stuff: Rose's Return

Derrick Rose talks about his road back to recovery from a season-ending injury and reads the letters of support from his fans.

D-Rose on The Night of His Return

Derrick Rose sits down with David Aldridge on the day before he returns to the court in the NBA.

CHEMISTRY ISSUES IN MIAMI?

VIDEO:The Heat get back on track against the Wizards

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – This is a high-stakes game of NBA possum that the Miami Heat will never win, not at this juncture of their title-winning ways.

Four games into their second straight season trying to defend their title, there are rumblings of chemistry issues with this group. Seriously, Heat players are using strange analogies to describe the current state of affairs for a team that still has headliners like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to cover up any deficiencies.

They have earned the right to start a season a bit shaky because we know how they’ll finish the season, if the opportunity presents itself. Dealing a with a few “minor” chemistry issues should not be cause for this sort of alarm. Then you listen to the words coming out of the mouths of players in that Heat locker room and it makes you pause for a second.

“Let me give you an example,” Wade said prior to Sunday’s game, which the Heat won 103-93 to even their record at 2-2. “If you’re in a relationship with a woman for a long time, you start getting comfortable. You stop doing the little things that you should do, that you did in the beginning. It’s just like a relationship. We got a little comfortable. Now we have to get back on that edge a little bit.”

Your first instinct is to look across the Heat locker room at James and examine his words and maybe his reaction to what Wade said, which will undoubtedly be relayed to the Heat’s other alpha male. When James mentioned minor chemistry issues and Wade responds the way he did, it becomes painfully obvious that whatever issues exist must be worked out by the two most important men in the room (no offense to Heat boss Pat Riley or coach Erik Spoelstra, but everyone knows that the James/Wade show is what drives the Heat).

“It’s just getting back into it — not taking what we have for granted,” James said moments later when told of Wade’s comments. “We’ve been together so long, you start to think we can go out and make it happen instead of talking through it. We lacked that the last few games. We got a handle on it today, and we know what the issue is.”

We’ll give it a few more games here at the hideout before we go hunting for that Chemistry For Dummiesbook to figure out the problem. Whatever issues the Heat have right now pale in comparison to what will go on if they continue to play .500 basketball into December and early January.

Based on their recent history, of course, there is little chance of that happening. So 82-0 is already out of the picture. Big deal.

After exhausting themselves last season in a quest to chase basketball immortality, the Heat should know better than anyone that this is a marathon and not a sprint. There is no need to stress a little early season scuffling when all will be forgotten the minute the Heat pile up four or five straight wins.

And save the possum for someone gullible enough to believe these minor issues are anything more than a temporary annoyance for a team that has managed to overcome all obstacles in each of the past two seasons.

Bryant rejoins Lakers, still weeks away from playing

Posted Oct 9, 2013 1:10 AM - Updated Oct 10, 2013 5:26 AM

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) -- Although Kobe Bryant is making steady progress in his recovery from a torn Achilles tendon, he's still a few weeks away from playing for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Bryant is back with the Lakers after a short trip to Germany to get treatment on his right knee, another trouble area for the 35-year-old guard. He sat on Los Angeles' bench for an exhibition game Tuesday night, and he'll travel with the team to China later this week.

But the fourth-leading scorer in NBA history isn't committing to any return date until he gets in shape and figures out how his legs will hold up when he's back in uniform.

"I haven't said anything (about a return date)," Bryant said. "I just keep it all open right now. I don't know why you guys are so hell-bent on deadlines. It's like the most ridiculous thing to me. It's entertaining. When I'm ready, I'm ready."

Bryant is running with his full body weight on a special treadmill, and he has done light jogging and calf exercises recently. His repaired Achilles tendon appears to be holding up fine, but six months of relative inactivity -- and donuts and sugar cookies -- have taken a toll.

"It's the explosiveness, the muscle," Bryant said. "It takes a little time, and then I've got to get my fat (rear) in shape. I was eating whatever the hell I wanted to eat and not running, stuff like that. Caught up to me a little bit."

Bryant said he'll need roughly three weeks of conditioning to get into game shape, his usual allotment for a return from any extended layoff. The Lakers' season begins Oct. 29 against the Clippers.

With time to spare in the preseason, Bryant seized the chance to travel to Germany for another round of the platelet-rich plasma treatment designed to stimulate recovery in aging joints. He has had at least three surgeries on the knee over the past decade.

Bryant posted a photo of his German treatment on Instagram, complete with acupuncture needles protruding from the joint. His recovery time from the procedure has been short in the past.

"I'm starting to move a little bit more," Bryant said. "I'm just trying to pick up the pace a little bit more. I'm not where I was the first time I had the (German) procedure done, being able to run as much, but I can do some things."

Bryant has been in near-constant rehabilitation on his Achilles tendon since he had season-ending surgery last April. He's grateful the finish line is in sight, even if he might not be ready when the Lakers open the regular season.

"I'll be happy when I'm able to get out on the floor and do what I do best," he said. "All this right now is just all a process to try to get to that point."