Derrick Rose

Derrick Rose
PG, 6’3, 190lbs, 28 years old, 8 years of experience

Given that Rose will never return to the level he was once at, he needs to adapt his game to suit. And this has never happened. Rose has never learned to his a role man. He has never learned to catch and shoot well, no matter how tweaks he adds to his increasingly painful-looking jump shot release (which has no rhythm on it at all). He has never learned the nuances of defence, nor how to when to switch, nor the footwork to keep in front and contest. He has never learned how or when to take contact, always preferring to use the body control with which he is blessed to do something spectacular. He never learned to pass on the move. And he has never been a controlled leader and playmaker in the half-court. He can still near-enough drive like he once could, if seemingly not quite as regularly. But all opponents are wise to it now, and he never learned the counters. And given its purpose is to read and react, the Triangle will never fit him.

Player Plan: Expiring $21,323,252 contract. Wouldn’t keep at any price, personally.

The most noticeable flaw is related to the shooting guard hole, and was the one roundly exposed by Miami. In their current guise, Chicago has only one ball handler, Derrick Rose. And if you take the ball out of his hands, Chicago has no other options.

Ronnie Brewer cannot dribble, and nor can Keith Bogans. Deng has never been able to do it unless he is playing for the Great British national team.⁸ C.J. Watson is a decent backup point guard on both ends of the court, and yet strangely, for a point guard, his handle is not great. You can therefore make a legitimate claim that Chicago's second best ball handler last season was its starting centre, Joakim Noah, the hands-down best player on the planet. But this is not much of a virtue, because unless it's his patented driving lefty layup high off the glass, Joakim is not in a position to do much with his ball handling ability, considering that he is no threat to make a shot from the perimeter.

Miami exposed this flaw by either double teaming Rose, or smothering him with bigger defenders, or both. When forced to give the ball up, Rose either turned it over on the jump-pass (which he does rather a lot), or gave it to someone who was quickly contested and who could do nothing with it. Chicago, therefore, lost its entire halfcourt offense.

Furthermore, Chicago struggles with shooting the ball from the outside. At the angry behest of Tom Thibodeau. Deng has mercifully turned his 22 footers into 24 footers and become a decent three point shooter, while Derrick Rose completely re-designed his jumpshot technique last summer and came out of it with a three point stroke that was a slight improvement on what went before it. (Although somehow, in the process, he lost his previously elite mid-range shot. All in all, a mixed return.) Ronnie Brewer can't do it, except, seemingly, for in the fourth quarters of playoff games. And C.J. Watson, the best 37% shooting backup point guard in the league, had a decent year with his flat-footed high arcing bombs, but hit only half a three a game. (If that makes sense.)

In game one of the 2010 NBA Playoff Series between Chicago and Cleveland on Saturday night, Bulls point guard Derrick Rose shot 13-28 from the field, 0-2 from three point range, and 2-2 from the foul line, for a total of 28 points on 28 shots. He added 10 points and 7 assists, and generally played well; it was his scoring bursts in the second half that kept what could (and perhaps should) have been a blowout down to a single figure game for much of the fourth quarter. He also didn't run away from Mo Williams on defense as much as I thought he might, although this didn't prevent the rest of the team from doing so.

However, had Rose been the beneficiary of some foul calls, his stats would have looked even nicer, and the game would have been even closer. Shooting 28 field goals to only 2 free throw attempts is not easy to do, even if Rose has done it before, and for a man who takes only pull-up two point jumpshots, floaters and layups, it's very hard to do.

But it happened. And the reasons as to why it may have happened are evident in the following video.



Derrick Rose honestly doesn't get fouled a lot. He tries to avoid contact so as to maximize the percentage of making his shots, and, because of his great athleticism and body control, he is able to do this to great effect. This is the main reason why he doesn't get to the line much, and also why he shoots such a high percentage. Only one play in this clip is shown from the first half of the game, and in that first half, Derrick Rose took 16 field goals and 0 foul shots. This is not an injustice, because Derrick Rose wasn't fouled on 15 of his 16 field goals. (And the one on which he may have been fouled, the first clip in the film, Anderson Varejao may have gone straight up, thus making the no-call the correct call.) The shots he took were floaters, open layups and jumpshots that he got himself open for, either in isolation or pulling up off the dribble.

This is an issue with Rose independent of his standing with the referees; sometimes, he just needs to go for the contact and hope the shot goes in anyway. He is learning to do this, but doesn't do it a huge amount. And he did not do it in the first half of this game, save for that one drive.

However, that's not what this video intends to prove. The intent of this video is to highlight a problem that has plagued the Bulls for two straight seasons. Put simply, even when Derrick Rose is fouled, he isn't. And he doesn't get as many foul shots as he should.

It is not a statement that implies any Cavaliers bias, because the theme behind this video applies to pretty much every game Rose plays in, not just Cavaliers ones. I have only used clips from this one game, not because I couldn't use clips from other games, but because I could not be arsed to use clips from other games. (A key difference that needs highlighting.) Additionally, it is both duly noted that there are not a huge amount of disputed calls in this video, and that some of those that are included are not clear-cut fouls as defined by the rulebook (and most subjective interpretations of it).

Yet it is also of note that Rose drew only one foul the entire game, the one featured at the end of the clip. Between that and a kicked ball violation in the third quarter, Rose didn't draw a single whistle in the remainder of the game, all while taking 26 field goals inside the three point arc, pushing the ball in transition and doing his damnedest to get into the paint at all times. All fouls should be evaluated on their individual merit, but in the context of the game, the lack of calls for Rose in this or any game does not behoove his style of play and aggressiveness around the basket. For every foul Rose avoids, there's a foul he draws without a whistle.

I feel that this needs highlighting.

And yes, it was a goaltend by LeBron.