Derrick Rose’s Fall From Grace in the New-Age NBA
The former Chicago Bulls MVP has to come to terms with what he’s become.
Over the past decade the NBA has experienced numerous trades resulting in inevitable ‘what-if’ after the fact reflection. Arguably, the first example which crosses fans minds is — what if James Harden was never traded to the Houston Rockets by the Oklahoma City Thunder? After all, this was the trade which seemingly launched OKC’s run of bad luck.
Another example— what if Greg Oden wasn’t injury prone? A couple of injuries would have been alright. But Oden was constantly injured, to the point he couldn’t string together a run of consecutive appearances. He was a great player — when he was on the court. The problem was, he was never healthy long enough to recognize success or build a professional career.
More instances of what-ifs are What if the Charlotte Bobcats got the #1 pick in the 2012 NBA Draft? or, What if the Golden State Warriors hadn’t blown a 3–1 lead versus the Cleveland Cavaliers? But, one that isn’t talked about enough today is this:
What if Derrick Rose had never torn his ACL?
Rose was projected to be the next great player in the NBA. He won Most Valuable Player at the tender age of 22. He was supposed to bring the Chicago Bulls back to being a championship contender. Some even predicted DRose would bring a title to his hometown before the villain LeBron got one for the Land. But, because of one bad fall, all of those dreams fans had vanished in an instant.
On the day everything changed, I woke up to news of Rose getting injured thinking that Derrick Rose just fell and tore his ACL. Everything would be fine once he came back and succeeded in #TheReturn. Little did we know, Derrick Rose fell from grace, and he wouldn’t be able to climb back to rule the kingdom that was the new-age NBA.
Vintage Derrick Rose
It’s January 20, 2016, and the Golden State Warriors are set to face the Chicago Bulls at the United Center. It’s a showdown between two point guard MVPs in Derrick Rose and Stephen Curry. Derrick Rose had just turned 27 years old that past October, while Curry was set to be a 28-year-old in March. On paper, it was bound to be a showdown for the ages.
All of a sudden, at the 4:16 mark of the third quarter of that game, Derrick Rose put Andrew Bogut on skates off a nifty crossover dribble. He was fouled as he drove hard to the rim, and Mike Breen exclaimed, “Boy, that was vintage Derrick Rose!”
Wait, what?
That’s how it was last year, with Derrick Rose as a 27-year-old. Even till now, with Rose set to turn 29 come October, Rose pulling off moves like those is deemed “vintage” already. Before we discuss why Mike Breen and other commentators keep on calling Rose “vintage”, it’s important to remember just what Derrick Rose was like in the past.
For the case of this exercise, we’ll take a look at his last good season: his MVP season in 2011. Many remember Rose as an athletic freak who barreled his way into the rim with his ridiculously strong frame. For the most part, that is correct. He was a gifted athlete, but at the same time, he used a variety of sharp crossovers to get past his defenders.
That didn’t mean though that Rose just scored inside. As his statistics show, that wasn’t entirely the case. In fact, his MVP season had his lowest points in the paint percentage, where he only registered a number of 39.8 percent. He was dominant when he would get to the paint. But he could also score in the mid-range, and in transition. Just ask Goran Dragic:
Rose wasn’t just a scorer. He was a very capable playmaker who could create not just for himself but for his teammates as well, as evidenced by the 7.7 assists that he averaged during that season.
Calling Derrick Rose the most complete point guard at that time was not far-fetched. If he continued to work on his jumper and put more effort defensively, God knows what he would have turned out to be. His blend of athleticism, control and skill was out of this world. He was destined to be a Hall of Famer. Multiple MVPs were essentially set in stone when it came to Rose.
But then, one fall later, all of those statements turned from realistic expectation to downright impossible. No longer was he destined to be the next face of the NBA. That idea was suddenly considered vintage. Instead, he turned into one of the biggest jokes in the league.
It wasn’t a hopeless case
When discussing why Derrick Rose couldn’t rise back to superstardom, we point to the multiple injuries that he sustained after his ACL tear. That’s a fair argument to make, considering if you want to be a fully-functioning athlete, you need to have body parts that were in optimal condition. Derrick Rose’s body was far from being in tip-top condition. He was broken down, and it was easy to think all hope was lost.
However, when you took a step back and surveyed the situation, it wasn’t as hopeless as people viewed it to be. Sure, Derrick Rose wouldn’t be able to reach the heights that he did before. But he could still be a decent basketball player. Your athleticism is essentially the basis of your ceiling, but your skill determines what your floor is as an athlete. Derrick was still a young gun, and he had time to work on various aspects of his game.
One particular aspect that is always talked about when discussing flaws of Rose is his jump shot. As mentioned before, Derrick was never seen as a knockdown shooter. In fact, he wasn’t even able to find a consistent spot where he could nail his shots (like Russell Westbrook’s stop-and-pop left elbow jumper in transition).
That didn’t mean Rose’s perimeter game was a hopeless case. He could still have turned it into a decent weapon if he had worked on it. It was a matter of using the correct footwork consistently in order for him to hit his jump shots at a higher rate. There were already good things he was doing. It was a matter of mixing these with some tweaks, which could have resulted to him being a more destructive force offensively.
There were other notable issues with Rose, like his poor defense and his shot selection. These were manageable. It boiled down to Rose having the desire to fix these issues in order for him to be a decent player in a league that was rapidly evolving.
The problem was, Rose didn’t see that. He still looked at himself as the athletic freak he was during his MVP season, and it led to him being stubborn about working on his game. Derrick continued to rely a lot on scoring in the paint, as evidenced by his increasing points in the paint percentage every season after his MVP reign. Derrick Rose refused to change in a league that was moving away from the traditional style of basketball.
What resulted was disaster for the former MVP.
Derrick Rose in the new-age NBA
Before we go deep into how Rose has performed in the new-age NBA of pace and space, let’s take a look at the statistics he put up with the New York Knicks.
DRose averaged 18 points per game with a field goal percentage of 47.1 percent, paired with roughly 4 rebounds per game and 4 assists per game. For a player in the dysfunctional Knicks franchise, those numbers aren’t bad. But here’s the thing with the new-age NBA: Your traditional statistics don’t hold much weight anymore compared to advanced statistics. These metrics give us a more detailed view of a player. By looking at these numbers, we as fans gain a deeper understanding of how that athlete performs for the sake of his team. Let’s take a look at Rose’s scoring splits:
Look at his field goal attempts percentage from two point range versus his field goal attempts percentage from three point range. Here’s the rough translation of those numbers:
DERRICK ROSE DOES NOT LIKE TO SHOOT THREE POINTERS.
In today’s NBA, that is not going to work for a top-flight point guard (take note, Rose still believes he is such a guard). Let’s name some of the best lead guards in the league. Stephen Curry. James Harden. Chris Paul. Damian Lillard. Kyrie Irving. Russell Westbrook. The one similarity when it comes to those names? They’re at the very least decent shooters who are willing to take a three-pointer every now and then.
Rose? The most glaring thing about him is how unwilling he is to take shots from beyond the three-point arc. He only took a whopping 0.9 threes per game last season with the Knicks.
What makes this so much more painful is how Rose’s seeming allergic reaction to attempting shots beyond the arc wasn’t some sudden sickness which arrived. It slowly but surely showed itself as his career regressed.
It is important to take note though, Derrick Rose was playing in the Triangle offense. There are two ways of looking at this when discussing Rose:
First, the Triangle offense is a system which didn’t suit Rose in the first place. It’s a system that calls the ball handler to simply initiate the offense by passing it off in the mid post so he can start cutting for open looks. That isn’t Rose’s game. He loves to play the pick and roll, and thrives as someone who creates for others as the main ball handler. So if anything, it’s the Triangle’s fault right?
There is another way of looking at this entire Triangle fiasco. Running the entirety of Phil Jackson’s favorite offense in today’s NBA is a recipe for disaster. However, bits and pieces of the Triangle are applicable in the modern game. One of those is the movement and off-ball action which the system asks players to do. It’s a read-and-react offense, something used by various teams in the league. As mentioned, Rose just isn’t good with the entire concept of moving around and looking for open shots. Take a look at this shot attempt by Rose.
It wasn’t a well thrown pass by Courtney Lee, so Rose wasn’t able to establish rhythm. However, Derrick simply did not look comfortable taking that shot. In fact, catch-and shoot shots were so bad for Rose that he only attempted 0.9 per game, only managing to register a 25% success rate. That number simply does not bode well in the pace and space era.
Some fans then ask, How does Russell Westbrook work in the league today?He isn’t a catch and shoot option! One player who is often compared to Rose is the Brodie. Many argue that if Rose hadn’t gotten injured, he would be better than Westbrook today. There is merit to that, considering how good Rose was compared to Russ six years ago. Both of them were developing athletic players, but Rose already had more skill and polish than Westbrook. Fast forward to 2017 and both are still great athletes who play point guard. However, one averaged a triple-double for an entire season, while the other looked like he might be on his way to China. The difference between the two lies with how one has been able to adapt to today’s NBA.
For this exercise, we’ll be looking at the isolation, spot-up and PnR handler columns above.
By all accounts, it shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise that Westbrook has a higher offensive value added than Rose when it comes to being the PnR handler. After all, he did handle the rock a lot for Oklahoma City, and he was very effective at doing so. As pick-and-roll handlers, Russ and Rose are both very effective.
But when you go left of the graph you can see that in terms of Isolation and Spot-up, Westbrook completely destroys Rose!
Let’s talk about isolation first. A big reason for this is because Westbrook is far healthier compared to Rose. This means that when isolating, Russ has more tools to score considering just how dominant he is physically.
Once we go beyond the Brodie’s sheer physical strength, we have to take note of Russ accepting the fact that he has to take jumpers to make defenses think twice when trying to stop him. That’s a big reason why Russ’s offensive value added in isolations trumps that of Rose by a landslide. Derrick beat out Russ when it came to usage percentage of the midrange shot (21.7 vs. 16.9), but the problem is that Russ took so many more threes (23.5 vs. 3.4). It was a matter of Russ realizing he had to take shots beyond the arc in order for him to have better looks inside. It helped with Russ winning MVP. On the other hand, Rose’s stubbornness about taking a three made his struggles worse.
When it came to spot-ups, Russ was a far more efficient shooter compared to Rose, coming up with 1.16 points per possession versus the 0.8 of Rose. You could argue Russ actually attempted less (1.6 versus the 2.4 of Derrick), but that comes with the systems they play in. When you compare their catch-and-shoot numbers, Brodie was not only more efficient (36.4 percent vs. 25.0 percent), but he also attempted more shots (2.2 versus 0.9).
In today’s NBA, a point guard not only has to be able to make three pointers, but he also has to take them. It’s been obvious for a long time that Rose isn’t a knockdown shooter. But what makes things worse is that he isn’t even willing to take those shots from beyond the arc any more. It simply looks like Derrick isn’t even willing to take those in order for him to improve.
Does Derrick Rose still have a place in today’s NBA?
If you average 18–4–4 in today’s NBA, you can still play. There is no doubt about that. Even if you go through his advanced statistics, it’s indicative that somehow, Derrick Rose still has a place in the league. But if he wants to continue to be a player teams will try to sign, he has to realize he’s no longer the player he was before.
Right now, DRose is still stuck in 2011. He still thinks he’s the MVP who can score at will with his freakish athleticism. Rose thinks he can still be The Guy. Unless he magically turns into a good shooter, that can no longer be the case. He’s no longer a MVP-caliber player. Heck, you could even argue that you wouldn’t start him as your point guard if you wanted to win a championship.
That’s just how it is in the NBA. Injuries happen. Your body and your playing style are affected. There are two routes you can choose: you can either adjust to the hand you’ve been dealt, or you can try to force things to work the way they did in the past and become irrelevant. In essence, Rose should be out of the league by now considering how stubborn he has been over the years. He’s not out of the NBA just yet. In fact, teams like the Lakers and the Cavaliers are courting him to join them. It speaks to the talent Derrick Rose possesses. But in the end, these God-given gifts can only do so much. Rose has to use these properly, even if it isn’t in the way he hoped they would be used.
If Derrick Rose wants to contribute to a good team, he has to start thinking in terms of being a sixth man who can contribute some scoring off the bench. He still gets buckets inside, after all, and that’s something that’s still incredibly valuable in this league. If he’s able to focus on embracing that role he’s meant to have right now, he might flourish once again. Who knows? Maybe he works on his jumper in the process. If all things go according to plan, he could turn into a solid role player for a very good team.
The sky is no longer the limit for the former NBA MVP. He fell out of the sky, and he’s had trouble moving on. Make no mistake about it, though. It isn’t over just yet for him. He’s far too talented and gifted for that. If he’s able to pick up all the pieces and accept the role he’s set to have, then maybe, just maybe, Derrick can rise to great heights again in the new-age NBA.
