Bernstein: Worry About Rose, Not Boozer
By Dan Bernstein--
CHICAGO (WSCR) So Carlos Boozer is some combination of injured, old, slow, loud, expensive and bad. Fine.
The apparent solution to what's ailing the lackluster Bulls – reading both papers today and listening to the radio since Thursday morning -- is playing Taj Gibson more minutes at power forward, if not putting Boozer on ice completely to save him for games that are presumably more important, and will presumably exist.
Whatever. To concentrate on Boozer's health and effectiveness, today, is to miss the far more important issue.
Derrick Rose isn't right.
Compared to others on the floor, he still looks faster, quicker and more explosive, and he probably is. But since spraining his ankle against the Pacers, he does not look like that compared to himself. As we noted in the immediate aftermath of the initial injury, the Bulls are not good enough to win an NBA title without Rose fully able to bail them out with individual, one-on-five heroics. So that partial tearing of ligaments may have indeed doomed their hopes, not to mention the moment he rolled it again at the end of Monday's dreary loss and limped off the floor, grimacing.
Two fallacies continue to be employed that too many are accepting as fact, because it keeps them from confronting a cold reality.
First, the idea that "everybody's hurting," in the NBA by May, so that somehow makes it all ok that Rose is playing at 75 or 80% capacity. One has nothing to do with the other -- there is no ledger on which teams' aches and pains balance out. Rose is the Bulls, the Bulls are Rose, and if he can't do what he's been doing all year, forget parades. Whether or not he can perform is utterly unrelated to some other guy's sore knee or bad back.
Second, that opposing defenses are responsible for Rose's lack of desire or ability to attack the basket, forcing him to settle for long jump shots and floaters. We heard what a great job Indiana did using the size and length of Paul George to deny Rose's drives (post injury), just as the Hawks' frontliners are sagging into the lane to wall him off.
Both teams did those things, but they only worked because Rose is hurt. Are we already so far removed from the regular season that we can't remember what his MVP-winning game actually looked like? He would be going up, over, around and through Atlanta with two good ankles. He spent all season shredding any and every defense designed to stop him – blitzes, traps, zones and at-the-rim muggings. Given time to see them and figure them out, he either blew the doors right off them or bled them to death from the foul line.
Rose is the Bulls, the Bulls are Rose. The Bulls are not as good as they were.
They could still be good enough to slug it out with Atlanta and earn a shot at the Heat. But how do you like your chances, now, after watching this constipated offense and Rose's 38% shooting, including 11-52 on threes?
He may not be in pain, perhaps because of a timely xylocaine injection here or there (after he broke NBA omerta by mentioning it). That doesn't mean the ankle is working properly, though, with parts of it stretched and ripped. What we see of him now may have to be enough.
He's young, people say, he'll heal fast, as they talk about Rose as if he were Wolverine, or Deadpool. As spectacular an athlete as he is, and as mentally tough they come, he's still flesh and bone.
Rose is the Bulls, the Bulls are Rose.
And we're talking about Taj Gibson?
Dan Bernstein has been the co-host of "Boers and Bernstein" since 1999. He joined the station as a reporter/anchor in 1995. The Boers and Bernstein Show airs every weekday from 1PM to 6PM on The Score, 670AM. Read more of Bernstein's blogs here. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein.
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