Chicago Bulls: Another Knee Surgery For Derrick Rose

By Phil Watson | Feb 25, 2015

Feb 20, 2015; Auburn Hills, MI, USA; Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose (1) brings the ball up court against the Detroit Pistons during the first quarter at The Palace of Auburn Hills. Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports /

When Derrick Rose burst onto the NBA scene as the No. 1 overall pick out of Memphis in 2008, he was going to be the Chicago Bulls’ savior, bringing life and vitality to the franchise in much the same way Michael Jordan had some two decades earlier.

And for three years, he was everything he was advertised to be. By the end of that third season, Rose was in heady company among point guards, joining Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson, Steve Nash and Bob Cousy as the only players at the position to win the NBA’s top individual honor, the MVP.

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Can it be that it was only four years ago?

I ask that question with the announcement Tuesday night that Derrick Rose will undergo surgery to repair a tear to the medial meniscus in his right knee, the same injury that ended his 2013-14 season after just 10 games.

Since winning that MVP trophy, there were precursors. Rose sat out 27 games in 2011-12 with various aches and pains, but returned for the playoffs.

In Game 1 of the first round against the Philadelphia 76ers, Rose ripped the ACL in his left knee. Since the initial ACL injury, Rose has played 56 games in three seasons, including not at all in 2012-13 and just 10 games last season before the meniscus tear.

Now Rose has a choice.

You’ve heard of the ever-popular win-win scenario? Rose’s decision is just the opposite of this. He is faced with the worst type of lose-lose scenario an athlete so dependent on his explosive athleticism can face.

He can opt to have the meniscus repaired—again—and miss several months and almost certainly the rest of this season.

Or he can have the troublesome tissue removed and be back in four to six weeks, at the cost of future knee problems because the effect of every jump, every landing, every cut will have a greater toll on a knee that is minus nature’s shock absorber, which is what the meniscus is.

After basically missing all of two seasons, Rose was working his way back—having some great moments and some games where you wondered if we’d ever again see the Rose of 2011 on a consistent basis.

For all the criticism he’s gotten in some circles, he’s averaging 18.4 points, five assists and 3.1 rebounds a game.

Is he pulling up for too many 3-pointers? Probably; taking 5.5 a game isn’t a great strategy when only 28.7 percent of them are going in.

But he’s twice injured his knees making those acrobatic drives to the basket, injuries caused in part by the violence in which he lands—as hard or harder as anyone I’ve ever seen play the game—and in part by the simple curse of genetics.

I’m reminded of what the late, great David Halberstam wrote of Bill Walton in his NBA opus from the early 1980s, “The Breaks of the Game.”

Halberstam opined that it was as if God intended to play some sort of cruel joke, creating the perfect center and putting him on legs and feet that were so badly flawed that they would never last.

It’s starting to feel that is also the case of Derrick Rose’s knees, the knees that continue to betray him and threaten to place Rose’s legacy with those of Penny Hardaway, Walton and Grant Hill, great players whose injuries left us all with a wistful feeling of what if.

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