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

[coldfish]

There's no hindsight here. It's a risk comparison.

What is the risk of the Bulls losing one game to the Hornets whose best player suiting up is Jarrett Jack. Jarrett Jack would be the 9th or 10th man on the Bulls, but he's the Hornets number one option.

What is the risk of Rose more seriously injuring his back when he is visibly hurt? What is the risk of him missing one game? Two games? Ten games?

It's not a difficult decision to figure out which one of those risks is higher. It's obvious. There is no hindsight involved.

You have no idea what the risk is of that.

My position, in general, is that if a player can play, he should play. No one should be held out for precautionary measures. The team and Derrick clearly thought that he could play against New Orleans. They were wrong, he couldn't play, but that has absolutely nothing to do with this point of discussion. Like I said, if your point is that the medical staff sucks, I agree.

That being said, if a guy can play, he needs to. The Bulls can't give away games if they want to win the title and the Bulls, ostensibly, can lose to any team on the road. If your point is that the Bulls are so good that they stand no chance of losing to bad teams on the road without their best player, WTF are you worried about? They already won the title. Even the 72-10 Bulls couldn't say that.

Last point, and this hasn't been discussed but I think it goes into Thibodeau's thinking, every player is knicked up. They have a sore knee or back or wrist. It happens. They have to play through it. If players start seeing people being taken out for precautionary reasons, you give yourself a chemistry issue. "If Rose can sit out for a sore back, why can't I rest my sore knee?" When your best players play through pain, it sends a message to the rest of the team and that's a good thing.

[transplant]

Last point, and this hasn't been discussed but I think it goes into Thibodeau's thinking, every player is knicked up. They have a sore knee or back or wrist. It happens. They have to play through it. If players start seeing people being taken out for precautionary reasons, you give yourself a chemistry issue. "If Rose can sit out for a sore back, why can't I rest my sore knee?" When your best players play through pain, it sends a message to the rest of the team and that's a good thing.

Good point. I wonder how many of our "healthy" players have ice packs on them after games. I'll set the over-under at 4...and take the over.

It's the doctor's job to determine risk of further injury/aggravation. It's the player's job to determine whether he can play effectively. It generally doesn't become the coach's job unless the doctor and the player say go, but the coach determines that the player was wrong with regard to effectiveness.

[dougthonus]

You have no idea what the risk is of that.

I can quite easily ascertain the risk of Rose having a further injury is greater than the increased risk of the Bulls losing to the Hornets without Rose.

My position, in general, is that if a player can play, he should play. No one should be held out for precautionary measures. The team and Derrick clearly thought that he could play against New Orleans. They were wrong, he couldn't play, but that has absolutely nothing to do with this point of discussion. Like I said, if your point is that the medical staff sucks, I agree.

If a player isn't going to further injury himself then I completely agree. Guys should play when they are capable of playing.

Do you think guys should play with a minor injury that could become a major injury if they play on it? Especially when going up against a team who's best player would literally not be in your rotation? Is that really the stance you're taking?

Because when we stop generalizing, that is what happened here. We played a guy who stood a considerable chance of greatly increasing his injury against a team who's best player wouldn't be in our rotation.

That being said, if a guy can play, he needs to. The Bulls can't give away games if they want to win the title and the Bulls, ostensibly, can lose to any team on the road. If your point is that the Bulls are so good that they stand no chance of losing to bad teams on the road without their best player, WTF are you worried about? They already won the title. Even the 72-10 Bulls couldn't say that.

So if Derrick Rose plays they have zero chance of losing? WTF are you worried about then?

This is a silly point that just shows you are not acknowledging anything I've written.

I've said countless times that I acknowledge they could have lost the Hornets game, but they could have lost it with Rose as well. Nothing is a given in the NBA, but the increased odds of them losing the game without Rose rather than with him were much lower than the odds of him giving himself a serious set back with his back which would cause him to miss more than one game and games that would be much more difficult to win.

My point does not even remotely suggest that the Bulls can give away games, but rather my point is that resting Rose would be a step towards maximizing your wins, because the greatest chance to minimize wins would have been to have Rose to more significantly aggravate his back. This is why I have referred to the whole thing as risk management.

Last point, and this hasn't been discussed but I think it goes into Thibodeau's thinking, every player is knicked up. They have a sore knee or back or wrist. It happens. They have to play through it. If players start seeing people being taken out for precautionary reasons, you give yourself a chemistry issue. "If Rose can sit out for a sore back, why can't I rest my sore knee?" When your best players play through pain, it sends a message to the rest of the team and that's a good thing.

To the extent any player on this team is risking a significantly larger injury by playing they should not be playing. We have enough depth to get around that. Guys who are sore and aren't risking further injury should play. Guys who have a minor injury that could become less minor should sit unless we're going up against Miami in the ECF in which case you might need to simply take your chances.

Given the makeup of this team, I think guys sitting out would have the opposite effect. The replacements would be amped up to get a bigger role and play more. This team has so much depth that I think everyone wants to get in on the action. I don't think you'd see jealously with guys sitting out, I think you'd see a bunch of guys excited to get a bigger role for a few games.

[DuckIII]

It's ignorant to (still) ignore already 4 facts:

Fact: Rose hurts his back in NJ and left the game

Fact: The following two games were against bad bad teams(we knew that before)

Fact: Rose wasn't healthy in NO

Fact: He didn't play in Charlotte = reason = His back

There are absolutely no arguments which any realgm expert could use against these simple facts!

I'm actually about to just completely give up in the face of superficial arguments like this being raised by those like you and doug to support the conclusion that Rose should not be playing as a medical matter.

Yes those are all facts, but they are incomplete facts. You know absolutely none of the medical data or day to day condition of the athlete that the coaching and medical staff, and Derrick Rose himself, does have.

If the argument is "there's a potential issue, so he should rest numerous games no matter what even if the objective and subjective information from the primary sources indicate that he is okay to play" then okay. Then we are just arguing being uber-cautious vs. expecting cleared players to play. We've all expressed tactical opinions on both sides of the issue regarding that and there is reasonable disagreement.

But don't start saying that the medical side of your internet fan opinion has been vindicated. You don't know any of the data undergirding the decisions made by the medical staff, coaches and Rose. You don't know if limited minutes can actually help loosen back muscles prone to spasm. You don't know, I don't know, but they presumably do. And as with all injuries that ebb and flow, the data changes daily and even hourly (which is why we have things called "game day decisions" and see coaches and players at a morning shoot-around say they'll decide later in the day prior to tip off).

If we are going to argue tactics and the extent to which cautionary measures should be applied and for how long, fine. But put your internet medical degree where mine is - oblivion.

When in doubt, rely on Occam's razor. The most likely scenario is that the medical and coaching staff did not recklessly risk the long term healthy of the $94 million franchise player and MVP to beat the Hornets in February.

[GetBuLLish]

For the life of me, I can't understand how the assertion to rest Rose against NO and Charlotte wasn't completely vindicated by what transpired over the past week.

Rose's back started hurting against Milwaukee. Two days later, his back problems got to such a point that he was knocked out of the game and could barely walk without being in pain. What does this tell you? This says that his back got worse, not the same or better.

Then, we knew we were playing literally the worst two teams in the league. We also knew that just prior to the game against NO, Rose's back was still acting up (although he says it was feeling better). At that point, the prudent decision should have been to rest Rose. The risk/reward of doing so was completely in favor of resting him. So what happened? Rose played. And from the opening tip, he looked like a shell of himself. Everyone knew it. And even Thibs, the guy who preaches that if you can play then you are playing as if you're completely healthy and won't be coddled (see Deng getting 40+ mins in his first game back, which I really didn't have a problem with), managed his minutes and played him the least of our starters. Right there, you can see that Rose didn't just "play through it." He was rested more than any other starter by his coach. That means that Thibs understood that rest = god for Rose's back.

Then we have the Charlotte game. Again, a cost/benefit analysis tells you that the prudent decision is to rest Rose. It's obvious that rest is good for Rose's back (see common sense; see also the fact that Thibs managed Rose's minutes against NO). And the cost is the chance of losing. But by simply looking at all the facts, you could reasonably come to the conclusion that we were still very likely to win w/o Rose. And what do you know, we beat them by 30 w/o Rose. No hindsight needed. Just a simple evaluation of the facts.

When in doubt, rely on Occam's razor. The most likely scenario is that the medical and coaching staff did not recklessly risk the long term healthy of the $94 million franchise player and MVP to beat the Hornets in February.

Maybe this is in reply to another person's comment. But if it's in reply to anything I've been saying, then this is a strawman.

For the 100th time, there's an enormous difference between: (1) being banged up, medically cleared to play, and playing; and (2) being banged up, medically cleared to play, and NOT playing. A coach can make a decision to not play a banged up yet medically cleared to play player, and in some instances, that would be the best decision for the team, rather than playing that player.

Being medically cleared to play is the minimum threshold to play. After that, there are still a number of factors that should come into play when deciding to play someone or not. I'm saying that those factors ALL pointed to Rose not playing.

How many times, when Thibs has been asked if a player will play or not, he responds, "I'll see how he looks in warmups and then I'll go from there." You think a doctor comes in during warmups and gives the player a full evaluation and tells Thibs? No, the player has already been cleared to play. Then Thibs decides if he's good enough to go or not.

Or just look at Rob Gronkowski of the Patriots. He had a big time injury. But it was the Superbowl. So he played. He was medically cleared to play, but he looked look sh*t. But again, this was the Superbowl, so they decided that it was worth it to play rather than rest. If it was Week 2, I'm sure there would have been a different decision. Oh and by the way, he just had surgery that will put him out for over two months.

So what's the point of this story? That there's a BIG difference between being medically cleared to play and the coach actually playing his player. The best decision was to rest Rose against NO and Charlotte. The fact that he completely didn't play against Charlotte and had his minutes curbed against NO completely vindicate this position. Just friggin' admit it.

[BeKuK]

I'm actually about to just completely give up in the face of superficial arguments like this being raised by those like you and doug to support the conclusion that Rose should not be playing as a medical matter.

Yes those are all facts, but they are incomplete facts. You know absolutely none of the medical data or day to day condition of the athlete that the coaching and medical staff, and Derrick Rose himself, does have. .

Your whole post shows what always happens when guys like YOU are not accepting other thoughts! Even if YOU you are wrong.

But ok..... I can handle it.

[transplant]

I'm actually about to just completely give up in the face of superficial arguments like this being raised by those like you and doug to support the conclusion that Rose should not be playing as a medical matter.

Yes those are all facts, but they are incomplete facts. You know absolutely none of the medical data or day to day condition of the athlete that the coaching and medical staff, and Derrick Rose himself, does have. .

Your whole post shows what always happens when guys like YOU are not accepting other thoughts! Even if YOU you are wrong.

But ok..... I can handle it.

Except Duck's not wrong. You (and many others) believe he's wrong and for the most part, done a nice job of defending your opinions. This doesn't make him wrong.

If I read Duck correctly, he's basically saying that he believes (correctly) that the people involved in the decision-making process here (doctors, FO, coach and players) have more and better information than we do, and are making their decisions based on that superior information.

It may just be me, but to argue against Duck's position, I'd need to find evidence of incompetence, recklessness or plain stupidity. None of these fit the Bulls' MO.

FWIW, here's how I see it.

- Team doctors need to make the medical call on whether a player can play without undue risk of aggravating a condition or further injury.

- The player who has been given the doctor's green light needs to give as honest an assessment of his potential effectiveness as he can. For "true warrior" type players, this assessment has to be taken with a grain of salt and and extra measure of watchfulness.

- The front office needs to decide whether long-term considerations call for caution over and above the doctor's and/or player's green light. When we talk about protecting an $Xmillion asset, this is the FO's job.

- The head coach is the one who needs to pay attention to that grain of salt and provide the watchfulness noted above, but he shouldn't play doctor or FO. He should only ask himself the question, "The doctors say he can play safely and the player says he can play effectively and the FO says it's OK for him to play, but from what I can see (in warmups and/or in-game performance), do I think he can play effectively?"

In the infamous "Paxson accosting VDN incident," the FO placed playing time limitations on Noah based on doctors' advice. VDN ignored these limitations. While what Paxson did was inexcusable, what VDN did was reckless and insubordinate. The incident was unfortunate, but it at least showed me that the Bulls' FO wasn't sleeping at the switch and it gives me confidence that they're not sleeping at the switch now.

In the NO game, I think all of our eyes told us that Rose wasn't quite right. However, he wasn't horrible either. Thibs clearly saw what we saw and gave Rose a light night...he did his job.

I don't know who made the decision to hold Rose out of the Bobcats game, but my money's on either Rose himself or the FO. From everything I can see, the system's working well.

[kyrv]

For the life of me, I can't understand how the assertion to rest Rose against NO and Charlotte wasn't completely vindicated by what transpired over the past week.

Good post, snipped for brevity, this is kind of the key point. I was among those that said, if he's healthy and cleared to play, he should play, what do we know. So I'm not one of those who were 'right', or appear to have been right. I'm not saying told you so, I didn't tell anyone and still am not.

But an awful lot of people (again, not me) somehow correctly guessed that he should have sat. That's troubling.

I first started to question it before the game, when Wennington, who is NOT a doctor and has not treated Rose, but has been around injured players, could tell by his movements that he wasn't 100%. Not rocket surgery.

I'm not saying the Bulls were wrong to play Rose, but I can't say that we should have complete unyielding faith in the decision making process.

I agree with Thibs' philosophies and what he is trying to build and instill. At the same time, some common sense goes a long way.

As one radio person said, the Bulls players are bright enough to know that the freaking MVP of the league is perhaps more important to the team than the average joe. By coincidence, he also seems to play injured the most. I doubt he gets begrudged not playing when he's injured.

[GetBuLLish]

In the NO game, I think all of our eyes told us that Rose wasn't quite right.

And that's all that needs to be said. He didn't look even close to right. And considering we were playing NO, many of us believe he should have been resting. It doesn't take a PhD or a bi-weekly paycheck from Jerry Reinsdorf to come to this reasonable conclusion.

I don't know who made the decision to hold Rose out of the Bobcats game, but my money's on either Rose himself or the FO. From everything I can see, the system's working well.

If you really believe that it could have been the FO that held Rose out of the game, doesn't that kind of make you question Thibs' ability to make those types of decisions?

FWIW, I highly doubt it was the FO that made the decision. I believe (and hope) it was Thibs.

[BeKuK]

Except Duck's not wrong. You (and many others) believe he's wrong and for the most part, done a nice job of defending your opinions. This doesn't make him wrong.

If I read Duck correctly, he's basically saying that he believes (correctly) that the people involved in the decision-making process here (doctors, FO, coach and players) have more and better information than we do, and are making their decisions based on that superior information.

Transplant I always respect your opinions and your posts, but with this I wholeheartedly disagree. It just looks like every time. Duck is right because he's Duck, currently he's simply wrong.

Everybody of you guys are arguing that we don't know nothing about the situation there what doctors, FO, coach and players are saying to each other....(Just a side note: I agree with that), but you guys are missing that all what Doug, GetBuLLish and me said ...already happen.

Rose should have rest against NO - didn't happen - we said he should have rest that one...and now why we are right: HE DIDN'T PLAY IN CHARLOTTE.....if we would have been wrong HE WOULD HAVE PLAYED LAST NIGHT!

When we were/are REALLY wrong about that.....WHY didn't he play the game in Charlotte?

In the NO game, I think all of our eyes told us that Rose wasn't quite right

Look, what you are saying.

[DuckIII]

The fact that he completely didn't play against Charlotte and had his minutes curbed against NO completely vindicate this position. Just friggin' admit it.

I will not admit it because it is not true. You have no idea if there was a direct correlation between his NO minutes and the decision to not play him 2 days later. None. That is the whole point. Injuries change, get worse, get better, for all manner of reasons or no real reason at all.

You want there to be a correlation to vindicate your unsubstantiated speculation. But there is not one known to you or to me. Maybe it was the minutes. Maybe it tightened up from too much inactivity, or while he slept. Maybe it didn't react well to a treatment. There is literally a 48 hour gap.

The beauty of being me is that I'm not arguing what is right or wrong. I'm admitting my ignorance of the underlying data that would need to be known to even form that opinion at all. But your internet medical degree has evidently given you sufficient expertise to form a definitive opinion on a matter of science and medicine with regard to specific human body that you don't have access to.

Impressive. But I'm not so skilled as all that. So I defer to actual doctors dealing with the actual patient until we have a Deng like situation (which is the only time I'm aware of the Bulls medical staff misdiagnosed anything or mistreated anything).

[coldfish]

Last point, and this hasn't been discussed but I think it goes into Thibodeau's thinking, every player is knicked up. They have a sore knee or back or wrist. It happens. They have to play through it. If players start seeing people being taken out for precautionary reasons, you give yourself a chemistry issue. "If Rose can sit out for a sore back, why can't I rest my sore knee?" When your best players play through pain, it sends a message to the rest of the team and that's a good thing.

Good point. I wonder how many of our "healthy" players have ice packs on them after games. I'll set the over-under at 4...and take the over.

It's the doctor's job to determine risk of further injury/aggravation. It's the player's job to determine whether he can play effectively. It generally doesn't become the coach's job unless the doctor and the player say go, but the coach determines that the player was wrong with regard to effectiveness.

That's one of the things I love about Thibodeau. Every game, every possession matters. Attention to detail and discipline matters. That philosophy has created a great atmosphere of accountability, preparation and execution. The inputs to that atmosphere is doing things like preparing for every game, calling timeouts when the bench screws up in the middle of blowouts and . . . . playing players when they are cleared to play. The outputs of that are regular blowouts and #1 seeds.

If you start changing the inputs to that philosophy, you mess with the outputs, which is wins.

I have watched too many sloppy teams in my life to take this issue lightly. Taking games for granted is how teams like the Dallas Cowboys are made.

I also don't get how this is a Thibodeau issue at all. I must have missed where he fired the medical staff and took on their jobs too. Its pretty obvious people are just looking for stuff to hang on him.

....

FWIW, I'll agree that Thibodeau screwed up and Rose shouldn't have played, but not in the way that people are taking it. If I was Thibs, I would have played Rose that game and then pulled him when it was obvious he was hurt. I would have then called up JR personally and demanded that the medical staff be fired immediately for clearing Rose to play. Not doing that was his mistake.

[BIGGIEsmalls 23]

In the infamous "Paxson accosting VDN incident," the FO placed playing time limitations on Noah based on doctors' advice. VDN ignored these limitations. While what Paxson did was inexcusable, what VDN did was reckless and insubordinate. The incident was unfortunate, but it at least showed me that the Bulls' FO wasn't sleeping at the switch and it gives me confidence that they're not sleeping at the switch now.

In the NO game, I think all of our eyes told us that Rose wasn't quite right. However, he wasn't horrible either. Thibs clearly saw what we saw and gave Rose a light night...he did his job.

I don't know who made the decision to hold Rose out of the Bobcats game, but my money's on either Rose himself or the FO. From everything I can see, the system's working well.

This portion of Transplant's post is the main issue that I've tried to argue for over a month:

I simply don't feel like re-typing it, so I'm quoting myself in the post below.

Look fellas. There have been some DAMN good & well-thought out posts in this thread. I only want to add a point that I've attempted to make for a month regarding "overuse" of minutes & "incompetence" of Thibs regarding injured players.

The two main players that this Bulls board seems to concentrate on are D-Rose & Deng. People, there is NO way in hell that John Paxson (loves him some D-Rose) or Jerry Reinsdorf (loves him some Luol Deng) would EVER allow Thibs to over-extend nor make an injury worse when it comes to those two players. If Pax beat the sh*t out of VDN for harming Noah, what do you guys think the outcome would be for Thibs if he harmed "The Franchise" D-Rose?........If JR gave the green light to fire a coach that was still owed money because he harmed Noah, what do you guys think the outcome would be for Thibs if he harmed "JR's favorite" Luol Deng?

[DuckIII]

Duck is right because he's Duck, currently he's simply wrong.

I have no idea why you continue to make this personal, but I'd love to hear what I'm wrong about since I'm not even taking a position other than to say that you guys don't have the data to form the definitive opinions you've formed. And I'm clearly right about that.

It is my position that given our collective ignorance of what is going on, and given the extreme unlikelihood that the medical and coaching staff is risking Rose's health to beat the Hornets in February, the most likely happening is that the objective and subjective data lead to the conclusion that Rose was fine to play.

Then when he did play, it didn't look right. So Thibs limited his minutes significantly (which in itself as we've seen with Noah can be an appropriate response to a medical situation - i.e., some play but not necessarily no play at all), and then for some reason not currently known to us, didn't play him at all the next game.

Transplant is correct. It appears the system is working.

[kyrv]

Last point, and this hasn't been discussed but I think it goes into Thibodeau's thinking, every player is knicked up. They have a sore knee or back or wrist. It happens. They have to play through it. If players start seeing people being taken out for precautionary reasons, you give yourself a chemistry issue. "If Rose can sit out for a sore back, why can't I rest my sore knee?" When your best players play through pain, it sends a message to the rest of the team and that's a good thing.

Good point. I wonder how many of our "healthy" players have ice packs on them after games. I'll set the over-under at 4...and take the over.

It's the doctor's job to determine risk of further injury/aggravation. It's the player's job to determine whether he can play effectively. It generally doesn't become the coach's job unless the doctor and the player say go, but the coach determines that the player was wrong with regard to effectiveness.

That's one of the things I love about Thibodeau. Every game, every possession matters. Attention to detail and discipline matters. That philosophy has created a great atmosphere of accountability, preparation and execution. The inputs to that atmosphere is doing things like preparing for every game, calling timeouts when the bench screws up in the middle of blowouts and . . . . playing players when they are cleared to play. The outputs of that are regular blowouts and #1 seeds.

If you start changing the inputs to that philosophy, you mess with the outputs, which is wins.

I have watched too many sloppy teams in my life to take this issue lightly. Taking games for granted is how teams like the Dallas Cowboys are made.

I also don't get how this is a Thibodeau issue at all. I must have missed where he fired the medical staff and took on their jobs too. Its pretty obvious people are just looking for stuff to hang on him.

....

FWIW, I'll agree that Thibodeau screwed up and Rose shouldn't have played, but not in the way that people are taking it. If I was Thibs, I would have played Rose that game and then pulled him when it was obvious he was hurt. I would have then called up JR personally and demanded that the medical staff be fired immediately for clearing Rose to play. Not doing that was his mistake.

It seems to me in hindsight that Rose should not have been playing. No clue who/how/why, but I hope the Bulls take a look at it.

Duck is suggesting that the Bulls wouldn't let him play injured, well, looks like that happened. So, apparently, they did.

He also returned to a game when he was seemingly obviously hurt in the first half (returned in the second) and then missed at least one game after that.

I mean I don't see how there isn't enough this season to ask, hey, let's tighten it up a bit please.

[GetBuLLish]

I think this thread has been a great lesson in how people tend to do everything possible to avoid admitting they're wrong, no matter how obvious their mistake is.

I do it all the time, to be sure. But in this situation, I hope I would have admitted fault. For example, if Rose played against NO and looked fine and had his minutes curbed similar to all the other starters (due to it being a blowout) and then played against Charlotte/looked fine/had his minutes curbed similar to all the other starters, then I hope I would have admitted that I was being overly cautious.

But of course, that is far from what happened.

The beauty of being me is that I'm not arguing what is right or wrong. I'm admitting my ignorance of the underlying data that would need to be known to even form that opinion at all. But your internet medical degree has evidently given you sufficient expertise to form a definitive opinion on a matter of science and medicine with regard to specific human body that you don't have access to.

Impressive. But I'm not so skilled as all that. So I defer to actual doctors dealing with the actual patient until we have a Deng like situation (which is the only time I'm aware of the Bulls medical staff misdiagnosed anything or mistreated anything).

Duck, tell me whether or not you agree with Doug's following post, where he lays out 3 possible reasons for Rose sitting out against Charlotte. Do you believe there are more possibilities, i.e. one that would back up your point?

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.

[scoutshonor]

I cant believe some posters do not want to rest our best players in the easy games...we are the deepest team in the entire NBA!!!! OUr bench can likely beat NO and Cahrlotte. What is so hard about resting our 2 best players a bit in Rose or Deng?! Why are you guys even arguing that? You just like watching them play?

If you like watching them play...I get it. You want to see you favorite player play...OK...good...we got that out of the way. But dont you want the same player to be 100% for the playoffs? How many time has deng been not able to play in the playoffs? twice, three times out of 6? I forget. last year Noah and Boozer were not 100%.

we likely have a 7 game series ahead of us in Miami who will take no prisoners. We will need Rose, Rip, and Deng 100% to beat them and we will need Noah at at least 90% and one of Boozer or taj to be 100%.

The posters who can not see the value in resting some guys fomr time to time to make sure we avoid tendinitis at season's end or a freak injury are being VERY VERY short sighted in this matter.

[kyrv]

When in doubt, rely on Occam's razor. The most likely scenario is that the medical and coaching staff did not recklessly risk the long term healthy of the $94 million franchise player and MVP to beat the Hornets in February.

You probably already know that 'recklessly' is prejudicial. They can be just a little wrong.

Are you saying Rose was healthy for the Hornets game?

I'm not talking about long term vision, just, did he appear to be healthy to you in that game?

Or in the game earlier when he was hurt in the first half and for some reason returned to play injured in the second half.

It's nice to say they wouldn't do that on purpose, and I agree. But can we assume they are 100% infallible? Maybe they are, hopefully they are, I can't make that assumption myself.

[transplant]

[
In the NO game, I think all of our eyes told us that Rose wasn't quite right.

And that's all that needs to be said. He didn't look even close to right. And considering we were playing NO, many of us believe he should have been resting. It doesn't take a PhD or a bi-weekly paycheck from
Jerry Reinsdorf to come to this reasonable conclusion.

I don't know who made the decision to hold Rose out of the Bobcats game, but my money's on either Rose himself or the FO. From everything I can see, the system's working well.

If you really believe that it could have been the FO that held Rose out of the game, doesn't that kind of make you question Thibs' ability to make those types of decisions?

FWIW, I highly doubt it was the FO that made the decision. I believe (and hope) it was Thibs.

I hate when ordinary mortals like us try to compare our experience with injuries to those of professional athletes, but I'm going to risk the self-loathing and do it anyway.

I've suffered from back spasms before and after disk surgery. They're painful as hell. Even after you get the inflammation under control (drugs), it feels like someone ball-batted your back for at least 24 hours. However, if you can loosen it up, you can function OK within 48 hours. This is just my experience, but it includes athletic endeavors.

When I saw Rose in the NO game, I had a sense of what he was dealing with. He wasn't loose so he wasn't Rose. They gave it a shot and then either he or Thibs pulled the plug (probably Thibs). The reason I think that it was either the FO or Rose who decided the Bobcats game was a no-go is that I'm guessing that Thibs would have given Rose another shot in the Bobcats game if they let him...that's how he (and most other NBA head coaches) handles his job.

Whose decision do you think it was to shut down Hamilton? Thibs? I seriously doubt it. Someone above him told him (and Hamilton) that Hamilton was no longer "day-to-day." That's how I believe it works.

[molepharmer]

Duck, tell me whether or not you agree with Doug's following post, where he lays out 3 possible reasons for Rose sitting out against Charlotte. Do you believe there are more possibilities, i.e. one that would back up your point?

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.

One huge assumption here is that Rose aggravated the back because he played against NO. There is zero evidence to support this assumption. As Duck said, maybe it was while he slept, maybe the plane flight made it worse, maybe his car hit a pothole.... If the back flared up, there's no way of knowing what caused it. I've had friends strain their back leaning over to tie their shoes.