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.

Programming Note

For those of you lucky college kids home for the summer with nothing to do, or if you're just bored at work, the Bulls take on the Miami Heat in about 10 minutes in the Orlando Summer Leage. Michael Beasley is out of the game, virtually removing any interesting storyline but for the diehards, this game is a must-see.

You can watch the game on your computer via the world wide web and NBA.com - and I highly recommend you do because these announcers are hilarious. They know only about 15 people are listening so they say whatever they want and it's actually really funny.

In the first game today Indiana played Oklahoma City and roughly 90% of the broadcast was spent coming up with hilarious fake names for the new Oklahoma City (god that's fucking annyoing to type) team.

So check it out - take a break from masturbating/Microsoft Excel in your respective states and check out both Vinny Del Negro and Derrick Rose's 1st "game" as a Chicago Bull.

Maybe He Should Take It Easy For a Bit

Derrick Rose participated in the night practice of Saturday’s double sessions for Bulls’ summer-league mini-camp despite battling tendinitis in his right knee.

The No. 1 pick limped noticeably following the morning practice, his knee wrapped in ice, but vowed not to miss games at the Orlando Pro Summer League beginning Monday.

"I’ve been coming 90 minutes early every day to get treatment," Rose said. "I’ll be fine."

Has anyone see video of Rose running these past few days? He's pretty much hobbling up and down the court.

Rose said the condition dates to his one season at Memphis and developed for noble reasons.

"I was scared I wouldn’t have a good season, so I would stay in the gym for like four hours until I got tendinitis," he said. "Coach (John Calipari) had to tell the managers don’t let me in no more because I was tearing up my knees and I had to keep getting MRIs. I just wanted to prove people wrong and let them know that I was going to play hard. That’s just the way I think."

I'm very glad he's opposite of Michael Beasley in that he wants to spend every minute of his day maximizing his abilities, but shouldn't the kid be watched very closely at this point?

Judging from my posting nickname, you would think I would have a say in this, and here's my prognosis:

Let him play this week, but play him maybe a little less then you normally would if he wasn't hobbling around the court.

82 games is a long season, and there's plenty of time for him to adjust to playing in the league. While I think it's good that he goes out there and starts to get a feel for how high can he lob the alley-oop the lob for Tyrus, or how much listerine he should keep near him for Noah's breath, he has plenty of time.

If Paxson and Del Negro really don't want to burden him right away with lofty expectations, then there should be no need to push him during these meaningless games.

Another reason (from Wikipedia): Chronic overuse of tendons leads to microscopic tears within the collagen matrix, which gradually weakens the tissue.

Due to their highly specialised ultrastructure, low level of vascularization and slow collagen turnover, tendons and ligaments are very slow to heal if injured, and rarely regain their original strength. Partial tears heal by the rapid production of disorganized type-III collagen, which is weaker than normal tendon. Recurrence of injury in the damaged region of tendon is common.

If you try to push him too much, you run the risk of him getting tears in his knees. He's only 19, and he had to get a shitload of MRI's in college for this. Tears lead to time on the DL, and that leads to an even slower development then if he takes it easy and allows his tendons to strengthen.

I'm sure if you're like me, you're very excited to watch him play today. But let's not forget; there's plenty of time to enjoy Mr. Rose. He must continue to grow before he can blossom.

Announcement

First off, the busty blonde to the right is a friend of mine. She was a Luvabull a year ago, and now she models all over the place. Nevermind the Ben Wallace shirt. Oh, you didn't notice? Good, neither did I.

Second, We wanted to get some different voices on Chicago Bull, so we asked reader/commenter/correcter of my terrible use of the English language Stalkingerinandrews to contribute. StalkingEA will post when he feels like, and today he's a little concerned about Mr. Rose. Take it away, StalkingEA:

A Plea to Derrick Rose

Wow. My first actual blog post. This is such a magical time when a lowly commenter becomes a lowly blogger...Wait, what!? I'm putting myself on Buzz Bissinger's hate list? Does this mean my wife is kicking me out and the only available room is in my parents basement? Crap. Ah, the days of last week when I was just a commenter making wise-ass remarks on various blogs. *sigh* Good times. (Editor's note: for future reference, attempting to be less gay when writing will supremely enhance the quality of your posts. - Noce)

The rest of this post is aimed at Derrick Rose. If anyone can get him to read this, by all means please show it to him.

Derrick, the city of Chicago already loves you, and you haven’t even played a game yet. We all have high hopes for you and the Bulls, and we want you to bring as much success as possible to yourself and Chicago.

That being said, please stay out of any more trouble. Just go to your court date, ask for leniency, and never get on the wrong side of the law again.

We here in the Chicago area have been plagued by star athletes who just can’t stay out of trouble, and we don’t want to see you go down the same path. Scottie Pippen was caught with a gun in his car, Lance Briggs crashed his Lamborghini and ran away, Cedric Benson can’t drive anything motorized while sober, and Tank Johnson’s crimes are too numerous to list here, just to name a few.



While your 106 mph speeding ticket was minor compared to these, nobody wants to see you progress to anything worse. Now, I realize it’s fun to put the hammer down on a machine that will take it, especially out in the country. Hell, I live not too far from where you got stopped. If you really want to come out my way and test the limits of some car, I know stretches of road where the cops won’t be. Just let me know.

But for now, please, PLEASE, just lay low, play some ball, and work on bringing some joy to Chicago and Bulls fans everywhere. Thanks, Derrick, I know you’ll do the right thing.

In case you missed it...

The Bulls took hometown stud point guard Derrick Rose with the 1st pick in the 2008 NBA Draft last night.

With a guaranteed salary of $10M+ for his first two years, Rose will be able to buy as much candy and sour straws as he can stomach. As a Sour Punch connoisseur myself, I could only imagine the damage done to my teeth if I could afford such luxuries.

You Know You're Getting Old When...

You go to bed with 3 minutes left in the game. That's right...I chose sleep. The Chalmers shot which I watched thanks to Youtube here at work was pretty crazy, but the overtime looked like it was all Kansas, so did I really miss that much? I'm leaning towards no.

I did enjoy watching the Chicago products play each other, though. Sherron Collins was all in D-Rose's face the entire night which hampered Rose to just 3 points in the first half. While Chalmers shot earned him the Most Outstanding Player award (Noah won that two years in 06', how's that looking on the NBA floor?) , it was Collins who really deserved something for shutting down the guy who no one could stop in the tourney.

I could really give a shit about all the talk with Rose's "Gummi Bear" diet. Noce lives on sour punch kids, and while he doesn't play 40 games of basketball in a 6 month span, he manages. I don't buy that shit. What I do buy, is the fact that his nerves got to him in the beginning, which made him so tenative.

One final thing before I leave you with the highlights to the last minutes of the game and overtime in case you, like me decided to say fuck it. If you've listened to the Mike North Morning Show, you've heard Mike DeCourcy from the Sporting News claim "free throws are the most overrated thing in the tournament". I thought the whole argument was bullshit to begin with. Think Douglas-Roberts and Rose would tell you otherwise? Fuck and No.

I know I didn't do jack shit yesterday; after Crede's awesome fucking slam that prompted me to yell while being on the train, I'll have some more coming up soon!