Rose named to USA Select Team

I knew there was a reason I signed up for the MyBulls newsletters - they always give me good posting topics. Today's most recent topic - Bulls' rookie PG Derrick Rose has been named to the USA Men's Basketball Select Team. Rose will join nine other top young NBA players to help the 2008 USA Senior National team that will compete in the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing.

Team USA Managing Director, and former Illini, Jerry Colangelo named Oklahoma City head coach and last year's Select Team head coach P.J. Carlisimo as the head coach for this year's team. Colangelo explains the thought process behind having what is virtually a JV team.

“We also brought into the senior team’s training camp last summer a select team of young NBA superstars and it proved to be valuable preparation for our Senior Team. Again in 2008 the Select Team features some of the league’s most promising young and upcoming players – including Kevin Durant who is a member of our Senior National Team and was the 2008 NBA Rookie of the Year.

We’re looking for this select group to really compete and help prepare our senior team for Beijing,” said Colangelo.

I'm happy for Rose to earn such honors without even playing one minute of NBA basketball but at the same time, I worry after his recent MRI results showing tendonitis, more basketball will only hurt his chances of being 100% going into the 2008-09 NBA season.

I think I can speak for everyone at ChicagoBull, which is basically only myself and Dr. C (Sorry EA), and refer back to our last post that said Rose needs some serious rest if he's ever going to be able to heal.

I'm no doctor, let me just get that outta the way. In fact, I have made it through 24 years of life pretty much ignoring what would generally be considered sound medical advice, but I decided to read up on tendonitis and here's what I found, particularly about tendonitis in the knee.

From to About.com's Orthopedics section,

What causes patellar tendonitis?
Patellar tendonitis is the condition that arises when the tendon and the tissues that surround it, become inflamed and irritated. This is usually due to overuse, especially from jumping activities. This is the reason patellar tendonitis is often called "jumper's knee."

When overuse is the cause of patellar tendonitis, patients are usually active participants of jumping-types of sports such as basketball or volleyball. Patellar tendonitis may also be seen with sports such as running and soccer. Also, some patients develop patellar tendonitis after sustaining an acute injury to the tendon, and not allowing adequate healing. This type of traumatic patellar tendonitis is much less common than overuse syndromes.

What is the treatment for patellar tendonitis?

Rest
The most important first step in treatment is to avoid activities that aggravate the problem. Your body is the best guide to know how much to rest the injured knee--if an activity hurts in the area of the injured patellar tendon, then you should rest from that activity.

The good news about this is that according to the same site, surgery is extremely rare and almost never an option unless chronic patellar tendonitis develops. So he's got that going for him, for now, which is nice.

I guess Rose will have to be the person in charge of how he feels but from his reputation as a gym rat who had dozens of MRI's on his knee during his one year at Memphis, I wouldn't doubt that he'll just play through the pain. Whether or not that affects his performance is yet to be determined.

I hope for the kid's sake and for the Bulls' sake that this is strictly a learning opportunity for him to gain knowledge of the position he'll be playing from some of the game's current greats in Deron Williams and Jason Kidd.