I believe people continue to see Derrick Rose rehab promotions, and get the wrong impression of his return and how ready he is.
Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations John Paxson says Rose isn’t even cutting according to ESPN Chicago.
Paxson also wants you to know, any rumored timetable about Rose’s return is ‘foolish,” at this time.
“He’s made real good progress to this point, but there is still so much ahead of him. We’d be foolish to target any type of date (to return),” Paxson said Tuesday on “The Waddle & Silvy Show” on ESPN 1000. “There’s going to have to be a significant amount of time that he spends on the practice floor before we would even entertain him getting into a game.
“We’re going to have to see, once he does start to practice, how his knees responds to hard practices two days in a row, three days in a row. And then we’re going to have to come up with some type of format of how much is he going to play, what are we going to do. So those things are well in the future.”
Rose tore his Anterior Cruciate Ligament against my hometown Sixers during the first round of the playoffs, but is working his way back.
According to Paxson, Rose has been working out with his teammates, but is unable to cut at this time.
“The one thing he’s got to get to next that’s really the big thing is being able to cut, the change of direction off that leg,” Paxson said. “He’s been close and those are things that he has to get through, but there’s no timeline. Those things will happen when his body says OK, it’s time for this to happen.
“Basketball is a different game, especially the way Derrick plays. It’s a lot of stopping, starting, cutting, changing directions, changing speed, those type of things. He’s going to have to get to a very high level before we put him out there.”
In my opinion we won’t see Derrick Rose until at least after the All Star break, and that’s if the Bull are contention.
The most important thing right now is health, even if this season becomes a wash for the team.