By Scott Taylor | @Taylor_Sports
All over social media I keep seeing Bulls fans complain about the Bulls trading away Derrick Rose. I’m not sure if the love for Rose stems from the fact that he grew up in the city or that he had a few good years here before he was injured. Either way, it is the best thing the Bulls could have done.
I’m not sure if fans are having selective memories. I see some saying they won’t be watching the Bulls because their hardest working players (Rose, Joakim Noah) won’t be Bulls next year. Now, you might like Rose for several different reasons, but his work ethic shouldn’t be one of them. This is the same guy that took over a year to return from an ACL injury and also said he has to take it easy because he wants to be healthy for his son.
Plain and simple, Rose isn’t a genuine leader and doesn’t have that extra will to win that all of the greats do. Now he is on the same team with Carmello Anthony, the ultimate superstar who doesn’t have that competitive edge. People making the Knicks championship contenders are seeing something quite different than I am, but that argument is for another day.
The fact is Rose is a shell of the player he once was. Some may see his scoring average over 16 points per game this past year and think that he is still capable of being a star, but the numbers go much deeper than that. He has played 127 regular season games in the past four years. It takes him 16 shots a game to average the 16 points, not a very good ratio for a star player. One of those reasons is his 43 percent shooting from the floor, but a bigger reason and the more troubling reason is he averaged just three free throws per game, which tells you he is nowhere near where he used to be. At his peak he was averaging over six free throws a game. That is about three points per game right there that he has lost from not being able to draw fouls as much. He has also gone from averaging between seven and eight assists per game at his peak to just over five, meaning he is contributing even fewer points to his team’s total than just the scoring column shows.
Add those sharp declines with the inability to coexist with Jimmy Butler, and the Bulls had little choice but to dump him. There is no way they were winning a title with Rose anytime soon, so now is the time to reload. Butler is now much more valuable to the team, not only on the court, but in the ability to stay healthy throughout the year.
So, while I understand the love for Rose that many Chicagoans have for him, the Bulls made their smartest decision in years to cut their losses and move on. It might hurt initially, but in the long run, it will benefit the Bulls and the fans will forget all about Rose.