Derrick Rose made a very bold statement and Chicago Bulls Photo/Media Day. Rose when asked about his team’s window for winning a championship: “I know I’m going to win a championship soon. So I’m not worried about that.”
And ESPN the Magazine has made a tacit but similarly bold statement a week ago by placing Rose on the cover of their NBA Season Preview edition. We’ve all heard about the Sports Illustrated cover jinx; ad nauseam. Is there an ESPN mag cover jinx?
Who knows? We’ll save that discussion for another day. For now, we finally saw Derrick Rose look like the D Rose of old tonight. He had 30 points and 5 rebounds in just 24 minutes and pretty much owned Kyrie Irving on both ends of the floor tonight. You may think “it’s just preseason,” but Rose has not looked good at all this preseason before tonight.
He didn’t look good in the summer either with team USA (I know no one cared about that made up tournament nor should anyone care about USA basketball, but it’s true). Derrick Rose didn’t look good in the brief action he saw in the 2013-14 regular season either.
Tonight he looked like Derrick Rose again.
The theme of this year’s ESPN The Magazine NBA Preview is POWER. Stemming from an offseason in which the narrative was all about the struggle for power, The Mag sought to capture that through three unique lenses: “The Third Coming of Derrick Rose,” and how his return has the potential to shift it in the Eastern Conference, if not the NBA;
Former MVP Derrick Rose has played a combined 49 games over the past three seasons. He’s undergone surgery for an ACL tear in one knee and a torn meniscus in the other. He’s watched his Chicago Bulls lose in the playoffs three times, twice in the first round. But now, with the Miami Big Three era over and two healthy knees, the power vacuum in the NBA is his for the taking. In “The Third Coming of Derrick Rose,” The Mag’s Wright Thompson explores if – and how – one player can shift the league’s balance of power (even with a new Big Three in Cleveland).
Yes, you can read the Derrick Rose story already online, at the link above. The print copy of the magazine will be available on Friday. And here it is: the cover shot:
“We know we have an opportunity ahead of us,” Derrick Rose said as preseason began. And regarding those who still question Rose’s health, if he’ll ever be the same player again:
“I’m going to have to answer that question for the rest of my career,” he said.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and very often writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his features stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2
