People have been parsing out that video all day, taken before the Bulls got crushed by the Thunder Sunday night. Derrick Rose put in about 90 minutes of work before the game, which is pretty common. He’s going full-out in practice.
But reading much into this dunk in practice — “he didn’t go all out on it so he must not trust his knee” — is trying being a blind man touching part of an elephant. Could Rose have thrown down a bigger dunk if he wanted? Probably. This video is a snippet of a lot of practices and workouts Rose is going through. It’s a small part of a big picture.
When will he be back? When he feels healthy and is confident he can be himself on the court. And Bulls fans, you don’t want him back before then. As I’ve been saying, it’s not about regular season games in February, it’s about his health and play the next five years. Don’t rush it. He’ll be back when he is ready and it has nothing to do with deadline moves or anything else (if you don’t think Rose is itching to play you don’t know Rose).
It will happen soon enough. Just wait.
