Tribune: Thibodeau stresses players should play if .....

[Indomitable]

Either Rose aggravated his injury and is now hurt worse [hopefully not] or the coaching staff has decided to rest him up before Boston [hopefully].

Either way, it looks like the merits of the "rest Rose while he's hurt" camp seem to have been proven out.

He should have rested

[BeKuK]

Either Rose aggravated his injury and is now hurt worse [hopefully not] or the coaching staff has decided to rest him up before Boston [hopefully].

Either way, it looks like the merits of the "rest Rose while he's hurt" camp seem to have been proven out.

Right, but it will be damn hard to accept for some guys! Now let's see .....

[GetBuLLish]

Either way, it looks like the merits of the "rest Rose while he's hurt" camp seem to have been proven out.

For some sneaky reason, I don't think people in the other camp will come to the same conclusion...

But yeah, let's hope Rose's back didn't get worse.

Best case scenario is that Thibs is maturing/learning. I think this is the case.

[BIGGIEsmalls 23]

Either Rose aggravated his injury and is now hurt worse [hopefully not] or the coaching staff has decided to rest him up before Boston [hopefully].

Either way, it looks like the merits of the "rest Rose while he's hurt" camp seem to have been proven out.

Right, but it will be damn hard to accept for some guys! Now let's see .....

For some sneaky reason, I don't think people in the other camp will come to the same conclusion...

But yeah, let's hope Rose's back didn't get worse.

Best case scenario is that Thibs is maturing/learning. I think this is the case.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjxefaCTYp4&feature=related[/youtube]

[fleet]

Either Rose aggravated his injury and is now hurt worse [hopefully not] or the coaching staff has decided to rest him up before Boston [hopefully].

Either way, it looks like the merits of the "rest Rose while he's hurt" camp seem to have been proven out.

there do seem to be only those 2 options. The wisdom of playing Rose in the last game has, if anything, come under even more fire now.

[musiqsoulchild]

Either Rose aggravated his injury and is now hurt worse [hopefully not] or the coaching staff has decided to rest him up before Boston [hopefully].

Either way, it looks like the merits of the "rest Rose while he's hurt" camp seem to have been proven out.

See, I cant go with that.

The opposite side of "rest Rose while he's hurt" is not "play him through pain".

It's more like "The coaching and medical staff and Rose know best....their call is probably the right call"

And they rested him today. Probably a well reasoned, well thought out decision. Just like it was to play him against the Hornets for 22 ticks.

[coldfish]

At the end of the day, there has been a large group of people complaining about minutes with the possibility of injuries since the beginning of the season. Of course, they were going to be proven correct (in their minds) because they set the bar so low.

Every team, ever has injuries, recurring problems and has guys that are banged up. If you are going to point to injuries during an NBA season as evidence of anything, then you are automatically going to be proven correct.

Its akin to saying, hey, Obama should be impeached. As evidence of this, I predict that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. (Next day) See!!!! The sun rose in the east, I told you that Obama should be impeached!

[dougthonus]

At the end of the day, there has been a large group of people complaining about minutes with the possibility of injuries since the beginning of the season. Of course, they were going to be proven correct (in their minds) because they set the bar so low.

Every team, ever has injuries, recurring problems and has guys that are banged up. If you are going to point to injuries during an NBA season as evidence of anything, then you are automatically going to be proven correct.

Its akin to saying, hey, Obama should be impeached. As evidence of this, I predict that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. (Next day) See!!!! The sun rose in the east, I told you that Obama should be impeached!

There are two distinct scenarios here:

1: People complaining that Thibodeau is overplaying our starters. I think that's true, but the argument is overdone, and I also agree he's not going against conventional wisdom with what he's doing [though I believe the conventional wisdom is incorrect in this case].

2: People are complaining that he played a visibly hurt Derrick Rose against the second worst team in the league while it was missing it's two best players due to injury. Neither conventional wisdom or common sense are on Thibodeau's side there.

You are now responding to criticisms in the second category by lumping them in with the first, but they're two distinct [though related cases]. The first I feel is minorly annoying because I think it adds some undue risk, but since virtually every good coach does it, I chalk it up to coaches not truly having a good understanding of risk. Given that I'd wager none of them have ever had to take class work in the statistics behind risk that doesn't surprise me much.

The second case is simply defenseless by rational argument IMO. It's a mistake. It's not necessarily a critical one, but I see no rational argument to why you play Rose in that situation. When you watched him for the first 3 minutes you should have said "wow this guy's not healthy" and taken him out.

[Dr Genius]

I dont mind playing our studs big minutes. But, I despise the fact that we are playing our starters against scrubs when we are blowing them out of the building.

What do we have to learn from it? The only thing is that you are exposing your studs to freak injury incidents. What happens if Drose has a career ending injury against some scrub in a blowout? I bet that a lot of you will change your tune really quick.

[dougthonus]

Either Rose aggravated his injury and is now hurt worse [hopefully not] or the coaching staff has decided to rest him up before Boston [hopefully].

Either way, it looks like the merits of the "rest Rose while he's hurt" camp seem to have been proven out.

See, I cant go with that.

The opposite side of "rest Rose while he's hurt" is not "play him through pain".

It's more like "The coaching and medical staff and Rose know best....their call is probably the right call"

And they rested him today. Probably a well reasoned, well thought out decision. Just like it was to play him against the Hornets for 22 ticks.

Break this down into a finite amount of cases by answering a few questions:

1: Why did he need rest today but Wednesday?

A: His back is better, but they just wanted to rest him for the heck of it.
--- Would have made more sense to rest him Wednesday then, and we'd probably agree we rested him on the wrong day.
B: His back is the same, but we decided to rest him now.
--- The decision to rest is now arbitrary, but the timing would have made more sense on Wednesday when if rest isn't allowing it to recover he'd have had the option of resting more.
C: His back is worse
--- The overwhelmingly likely scenario in which this is true is that he aggravated it by playing Wednesday in which case we've worsened an injury in a game the Bulls would have cruised to victory in.

In any of the three scenarios, it still ultimately would have made more sense to rest him Wednesday. I don't think it's some ultra critical failure, but it seemed like an obvious choice at the time.

[coldfish]

2: People are complaining that he played a visibly hurt Derrick Rose against the second worst team in the league while it was missing it's two best players due to injury. Neither conventional wisdom or common sense are on Thibodeau's side there.

Without Rose, the Bulls are missing their starting backcourt. You are using the advantage of hindsight, that the bulls won handily, to change the argument. Just last night, a fully healthy OKC team lost to a pretty bad Sacramento team. Miami lost to Milwaukee . . . twice.

There is a risk that the Bulls can actually lose these games, which you guys are completely ignoring. Before the game, Thibodeau doesn't know if tonight is going to be that night. In order to mitigate that risk, he puts the best team he can on the court.

It didn't work, so he sat Rose. In hindsight it didn't hurt the Bulls at all.

[fleet]

Break this down into a finite amount of cases by answering a few questions:

1: Why did he need rest today but Wednesday?

A: His back is better, but they just wanted to rest him for the heck of it.
--- Would have made more sense to rest him Wednesday then, and we'd probably agree we rested him on the wrong day.
B: His back is the same, but we decided to rest him now.
--- The decision to rest is now arbitrary, but the timing would have made more sense on Wednesday when if rest isn't allowing it to recover he'd have had the option of resting more.
C: His back is worse
--- The overwhelmingly likely scenario in which this is true is that he aggravated it by playing Wednesday in which case we've worsened an injury in a game the Bulls would have cruised to victory in.

In any of the three scenarios, it still ultimately would have made more sense to rest him Wednesday. I don't think it's some ultra critical failure, but it seemed like an obvious choice at the time.

I only hope still has room to grow as a coach. His blindspot is dangerous. No not ultracritical in the sense that anything he has missed was irrecoverable (from) failure. But failure in this instance nonetheless. I can even go along with him having and earnest POV on the subject of defering all the time to a player's own judgement. Giving tacit encouragement to ignore injury and play. Only he should be open to suggestion regarding his outlook. I guarantee you any of the great coaches in history wil tell you they were a different coach at the end of their careers than they were in the beginning.

[fleet]

Without Rose, the Bulls are missing their starting backcourt. You are using the advantage of hindsight, that the bulls won handily, to change the argument. Just last night, a fully healthy OKC team lost to a pretty bad Sacramento team. Miami lost to Milwaukee . . . twice.

you need to assume some risk when judging whether or not a player should play. Top teams do lose sometimes to the dregs. And you have to suck it up and make a hard choice. But our last 2 opponents? Tonight was not a difficult call.

There is a risk that the Bulls can actually lose these games, which you guys are completely ignoring. Before the game, Thibodeau doesn't know if tonight is going to be that night. In order to mitigate that risk, he puts the best team he can on the court.

Winning and losing a particular game or 2 has to take a back seat sometimes to protecting the health of your players in the long run. Yeah, we have to protect the top seed. But not like that we don't.

It didn't work, so he sat Rose. In hindsight it didn't hurt the Bulls at all.

we don't know how Rose was affected yet. I'm guessing not irreparably. But likely bad enough to cause the hardest coach to ever stalk a sideline to relent. There are only 2 options here. Thibs changed his outlook (hopefully but I doubt it), or Rose was set back from playing the last game.

[coldfish]

Without Rose, the Bulls are missing their starting backcourt. You are using the advantage of hindsight, that the bulls won handily, to change the argument. Just last night, a fully healthy OKC team lost to a pretty bad Sacramento team. Miami lost to Milwaukee . . . twice.

you need to assume some risk when judging whether or not a player should play. Top teams do lose sometimes to the dregs. And you have to suck it up and make a hard choice. But our last 2 opponents? Tonight was not a difficult call.

There is a risk that the Bulls can actually lose these games, which you guys are completely ignoring. Before the game, Thibodeau doesn't know if tonight is going to be that night. In order to mitigate that risk, he puts the best team he can on the court.

Winning and losing a particular game or 2 has to take a back seat sometimes to protecting the health of your players in the long run. Yeah, we have tpo protect the top seed. But not like that we don't.

It didn't work, so he sat Rose. In hindsight it didn't hurt the Bulls at all.

we don't know how Rose was affected yet. I'm guessing not irreparably. But clearly bad enough to cause the hardest coach to ever stalk a sideline to relent.

You are running with assumptions as facts. First off, you are assuming that Rose somehow aggravated his injury. Secondly, you are assuming that the injury can be exacerbated. You are essentially assuming a worst case scenario, where by playing one game, Rose could end up missing many games.

You are also putting 100% of the blame on Thibodeau. He isn't the doctor. Remember, this is the training staff that told Luol Deng he could play on a broken leg (that was before TT). Even Paxson questioned Luol's toughness that year based on the training staff's evaluation . . . before he found out the truth. IIRC, Luol actually had to go to his own doctor to find the stress fracture because he disagreed with the Bulls medical staff.

Honestly, if someone wants to make the point that the Bulls training and medical staff sucks eggs, I won't disagree.

If someone wants to make the point that Thibodeau should play doctor and sit players who have been cleared to play "just in case", I vehemently disagree.

[BIGGIEsmalls 23]

we don't know how Rose was affected yet. I'm guessing not irreparably. But likely bad enough to cause the hardest coach to ever stalk a sideline to relent. There are only 2 options here. Thibs changed his outlook (hopefully but I doubt it), or Rose was set back from playing the last game.

You can't state that the above scenario occurred as a fact.

You, myself, nor anybody else on this board were in the room when the decision was made to sit Rose out of tonight's game.

You're stating that Thibs relented & sat Rose--------proof?
You're stating that Rose was set back----------proof?

The truth is that you don't know. You're stating those as the only two reasons are your opinion, not proven fact.

Edit: Coldfish beat me to it.

[northbrookrich]

Doug - do you want to know what really happened? Derrick Rose has previously had back problems like this going back to high school. He told the team that when it has happened in the past he took a day off and was fine with no re-occurrences. Thibs claimed that this scenario took place the year before with Derrick missing one game and then coming back the following game with no further back issues the rest of the season. Get Bullish claims that this isn't the case - so either Thibs is lying or he is mis-remembering. Regardless, Thibs must have used this information in his decision making process. Then, Rose said all day the day of the NO game that his back was fine reported in an ESPN article for all to see (though Fridell may have heard differently). Then the doctors examined him and he seemed to be OK to go. So, guess what, they gave him a chance to play. And, guess what, he looked a little gimpy out there while playing AND the Bulls were blowing out NO. So, guess what else Get Bullish, they limited his minutes. Based on the blow out and based on the way Rose was playing. I don't know what they would have done if the game was closer or if Rose was not wincing out there during the game - do you?

So, they took all of this new information and the way he responded to further treatment over the next two days and, what happened? - they decided that this back injury must NOW be worse than what he has experienced in the past. (I'm not saying that he injured it worse by trying to play, I have no idea if that is the case). Therefore, the smart doctors, coaches and player decided together that he would not play tonight. Was this decision based on the quality of the opponent? Maybe. But, I hope not. If Rose is not healthy and needs time to heal, I would prefer that they rest him until he is healthy. Don't play him on national TV on Sunday against the Celtics.

So, Doug, to address your other point, I don't know what qualifies you or anyone else on this board to diagnose Rose's injury. But, this is completely different than commenting on basketball related issues such as trades and free agency and even game strategy. People are making stuff up with absolutely no information about the severity of the injury or whether playing with the injury has potential negative consequences.

So the real question is Dr. Doug and Dr. Get Bullish - how long should he sit out? Since you are armchair doctoring, why don't you tell us when he should come back? Are you going to trust the doctors next game, next week, next month? Or are you just going to sit back with the ability to criticize whenever a player re-injures himself claiming that it must be bad doctors or coaches forcing guys/letting guys play before they otherwise should have. It sounds like Doug just wants to sit Rose against bad teams and assume that we will win anyway. Is that right?

[northbrookrich]

To restate in a shorter more succinct way, my point has always been that some people are jumping to judgment without all the facts or really even any facts other than a statement that he has had back spasms. I am not claiming to know the facts. For all we know, Thibs is pulling a Belicheck and this is a flaring up of the toe injury with no REAL back injury, but they don't want other teams to know about it. And, it certainly is possible that the coaching staff, doctors and/or Rose messed up in playing him the other night. But, this is completely different from other situations where we might not have ALL the facts, but we have enough to have a conversation. In most of those instances, I wouldn't want people on our board making basketball decisions for the Bulls anyway since they don't have the resources or 1st hand knowledge that Bulls' management has. But, I wouldn't suggest to end all conversation or shut down this website.

[GetBuLLish]

Nycrich, that entire post was you rambling on and on in any sort of way just to avoid admitting you're wrong.

Thus, I am only going to respond to the following:

Thibs claimed that this scenario took place the year before with Derrick missing one game and then coming back the following game with no further back issues the rest of the season. Get Bullish claims that this isn't the case - so either Thibs is lying or he is mis-remembering.

I never said this. You have once again made something up or attributed a statement to me that I never said. Thank you very much.

And again, I will quote myself to see I can get a response from you (or anyone else who has been arguing against Rose sitting out). I will again assume that I will not get a response.

I have brought up these examples over and over and over again. Yet the people who I'm debating against seem to conveniently never address them. Hopefully you will now.

1) On multiple occasions, Rip came back too early from injury and had to miss time after (especially the Detroit game).

2) Rose has admitted to coming back too early from his turf toe injury.

Now what do these events do to your "if he's cleared to play, he should be play and no one should question this" philosophy? Was the team "trying to hurt their" their players in these instances? Was the team "intentionally playing [them] so that he would miss more time with a more serious injury"?

Please address those instances of players coming back too soon from injury, THIS YEAR.

[babblin-on]

Without Rose, the Bulls are missing their starting backcourt. You are using the advantage of hindsight, that the bulls won handily, to change the argument. Just last night, a fully healthy OKC team lost to a pretty bad Sacramento team. Miami lost to Milwaukee . . . twice.

you need to assume some risk when judging whether or not a player should play. Top teams do lose sometimes to the dregs. And you have to suck it up and make a hard choice. But our last 2 opponents? Tonight was not a difficult call.

There is a risk that the Bulls can actually lose these games, which you guys are completely ignoring. Before the game, Thibodeau doesn't know if tonight is going to be that night. In order to mitigate that risk, he puts the best team he can on the court.

Winning and losing a particular game or 2 has to take a back seat sometimes to protecting the health of your players in the long run. Yeah, we have tpo protect the top seed. But not like that we don't.

It didn't work, so he sat Rose. In hindsight it didn't hurt the Bulls at all.

we don't know how Rose was affected yet. I'm guessing not irreparably. But clearly bad enough to cause the hardest coach to ever stalk a sideline to relent.

You are running with assumptions as facts. First off, you are assuming that Rose somehow aggravated his injury. Secondly, you are assuming that the injury can be exacerbated. You are essentially assuming a worst case scenario, where by playing one game, Rose could end up missing many games.

You are also putting 100% of the blame on Thibodeau. He isn't the doctor. Remember, this is the training staff that told Luol Deng he could play on a broken leg (that was before TT). Even Paxson questioned Luol's toughness that year based on the training staff's evaluation . . . before he found out the truth. IIRC, Luol actually had to go to his own doctor to find the stress fracture because he disagreed with the Bulls medical staff.

Honestly, if someone wants to make the point that the Bulls training and medical staff sucks eggs, I won't disagree.

If someone wants to make the point that Thibodeau should play doctor and sit players who have been cleared to play "just in case", I vehemently disagree.

How about if a player is visibly bothered by his injury, as in this case?

Given your ongoing stance, should we assume that you disagree with Thibodeau's decision to sit Rose tonight?

[northbrookrich]

I never said this. You have once again made something up or attributed a statement to me that I never said. Thank you very much.

You and babblin on are the same guy. Or something like that. Regardless, you failed to address the truth in that article and the sequence of events that occurred. Based on what we know, it was completely logical for the Bulls to play Rose in the NO game. There is no information that you have provided to proves otherwise.

And again, I will quote myself to see I can get a response from you (or anyone else who has been arguing against Rose sitting out). I will again assume that I will not get a response.

I have brought up these examples over and over and over again. Yet the people who I'm debating against seem to conveniently never address them. Hopefully you will now.

1) On multiple occasions, Rip came back too early from injury and had to miss time after (especially the Detroit game).

2) Rose has admitted to coming back too early from his turf toe injury.

Now what do these events do to your "if he's cleared to play, he should be play and no one should question this" philosophy? Was the team "trying to hurt their" their players in these instances? Was the team "intentionally playing [them] so that he would miss more time with a more serious injury"?

Please address those instances of players coming back too soon from injury, THIS YEAR.

[/quote]

The reason no one is addressing these is because they are irrelevant. Even if the medical staff made mistakes in these instances, does not mean that a mistake was made in this instance. Nevertheless, what is your point? When should Rose play again? Why was sitting out tonight and against NO the right call and not sitting out every game since he hurt his toe? Maybe that is what they should have done. Maybe they shouldn't be letting Deng play with his messed up wrist? Any time a player gets hurt you can question whether the trainers did a good enough job getting players in shape or stretching them out or whatever. So, what is the point?