Now that Derrick Rose is out there on the market, everyone’s thinking that he’s going to go to the Minnesota Timberwolves. But will Rose return to form?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 48 hours, the Cleveland Cavaliers basically blew up their entire roster. One of the biggest moves at the 2018 NBA Trade Deadline was a three-team deal that in part sent Derrick Rose and Jae Crowder to the Utah Jazz in exchange for Rodney Hood.
Subsequently after the deal went through, Shams Charania of Yahoo! Sports reported that the Jazz would release Rose.
Then came all of the speculation. Where would Rose end up? Maybe he’d go back to the Chicago Bulls? Would the San Antonio Spurs consider bringing Rose on board?
The team that everyone was thinking about, though, was the Minnesota Timberwolves. Right on cue, Marc Stein of the New York Times reported it could indeed happen:
The Timberwolves will try to sign Derrick Rose if he clears waivers after his looming release by Utah, according to league sources
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) February 8, 2018
Can’t say that I was flabbergasted with this one. It seems like it makes perfect sense. The Timberwolves are struggling at the point guard position.
Starter Jeff Teague is currently averaging 12.7 points, 7.0 assists and 2.9 rebounds per game. Besides the assists per game, those numbers are below-average for him career-wise.
Backup point guard and Minnesota native Tyus Jones isn’t doing very well either. He’s averaging just 5.0 points per game, 2.8 assists and 1.7 rebounds per game.
Now you may be thinking, “Well, since he’s coming off the bench, he’s not getting a ton of minutes.” The fact of the matter is, Jones is getting 18.3 minutes per game. With that amount of playing time, you should be putting up more substantial numbers than those.
Dunking with Wolves
Then there’s Derrick Rose. Ever since he tore his ACL back in the 2012 NBA Playoffs, he hasn’t been the same. He’s had both on- and off-court issues.
Rose has been battling countless injuries and doesn’t have the explosiveness he had in 2011. In just 16 games with the Cavs this year, he averaged 9.8 points, 1.8 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game.
He’s putting up career lows in pretty much every single category, and it wasn’t like he was playing on an awful team with nobody around him; he was playing on the Cavs.
One thing that really hurts D-Rose is he can’t shoot. So far this year he’s shooting 25 percent from deep, that makes Lonzo Ball look like Reggie Miller.
Without the ability to cut through the lane and get to the rack, he’s been settling for 3-pointers and deep mid-range shots. He just can’t hit those.
Will the reunion between him and Thibodeau make a difference? I’m going to go out on a limb and say it won’t. I get that he was there when Rose was great, but we have to stop thinking that the former MVP is the same player he once was.
If you just went off of the way he looks right now, Derrick Rose is a guy who’d come off of the bench on a bad NBA team.
Next: Biggest winners and losers of the 2018 NBA Trade Deadline
I know this is harsh and this one hurts to write due to the fact that Derrick Rose was the best player on my favorite team growing up, but if we face facts, the man is done.