The highly anticipated return of Derrick Rose to the court occurred on Saturday, as the Bulls made their preseason debut against the Pacers. All eyes were on Rose, of course, who was seeing his first game action in almost 18 months after sitting out all of last season to rehabilitate his torn ACL injury.
If there’s one thing we learned in this exhibition, it’s that Rose will be all the way back and then some this season. He showed plenty of the speed, explosiveness, and fearlessness that we remember from the former MVP, with no signs of an injury hangover that would limit his ability in any way.
Rose finished with 13 points on 5-of-12 shooting, to go along with three assists and four turnovers. The shots he made were all right at the rim -- either layups, a dunk, or a putback in traffic. Where he struggled was to find a rhythm on his outside shot, although only a couple of his misses were jumpers in the true sense. Most came on drives where he pulled up short with a defender in the way, resulting in an awkward attempt.
A couple of his turnovers could simply be chalked up to not quite being used to playing in the flow of a game against an opponent at NBA speed, so no worries there, either. None of the assists came in spectacular fashion -- all three were to Luol Deng, and the passes from Rose were pedestrian at best, with his teammate knocking down jumpers (twice) or slashing to the basket to finish.
The outside shooting will come, as will the comfort level of once again playing with his teammates. The most important parts of Rose’s game are already in place, however, and Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau summed up what we all saw quite nicely afterward -- in essence, that Rose is back.
“The speed and the power that he plays with,” Thibodeau said, “there’s no one like him.”