Deng It!

Not all is well in the Windy City despite the fact that the Chicago Bulls sit on top of the NBA with the best record. The big question about the Bulls coming into this shortened season was whether or not they could remain healthy as a unit long enough to contend for a championship. Well, there have been plenty of key injuries thus far and none of them have been to the most injury prone player on the team, Carlos Boozer. This brings into question many factors including whether or not the Bulls will be able to make a run at the Finals this season and more importantly, will some of their main core players, including Derrick Rose, have longterm issues healthwise. Let us take a look at some of these injuries and the influence they might have on this season and beyond.

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Simply "resting rose a couple weeks" makes no sense. A couple weeks will be completley worthless if he just up and starts playing again after the rest. Its not long enough to heal, and playing on it is not going to make it any worse, just not any better. This is the type of injury that lingers on seemingly forever, but it does go away with enough rest sometimes. If you dont want him playing on and off, then you got to sit him for a lengthy amount of time, fully knowing there is no guarentee he will feel better even after an extended amount of rest.

Same goes for Deng, kind of... This is a tough call, as it sounds like he can play with this injury. But there is no way he or anyone can convince me he will be over 90% in the playoffs this year without surgeory. Problem is, with surgeory, he likely would not be fully healed by the playoffs anyways.



Me reccomendation? Shut down both Rose and Deng. Get Deng is surgeory tomorrow, and shut down Rose tomorrow.  Rose gets 6 weeks off then gauges how he feels from there, and we hope that Deng can be ready by playoff time, or even the 2nd/3rd round (if the Bulls advance).

Bulls have a good enough record already where in the worst case scenario, they would still make the playoffs even with Rose and Deng out for a while.



But we all know thats not going to happen. Rose and Deng are going to be logging 42 minutes in a blowout win over some terirble team in just a few weeks time. 

Without Rose and Deng for a couple of months, we won't make the playoffs.  Even if we did, it would be as a 7th or 8th seed which would mean we would face Miami or one of the tougher east teams in the first round.  We would get booted in the first round with a rusty Rose and Deng just coming back into the lineup.  The chemistry will be thrown out of whack.

Best thing to do would be to limit their minutes especially against the easier opponents.  We don't need to win by 40 points every game. 

The Bulls have a 15-4 Record already in a shortened season. You dont think that the team minus Rose and Deng can go about .500 the rest of the season in the weak eastern conference??? Because that would be enough to make it as a 6-8 seed.

Rose and Deng will not be "just coming back" in this scenario. They would have had at least a week. And this is a Bulls team that no longer needs to "gel". They came out of the gate this year firing on all cylinders. 

Also, who cares if they land on the Heat in round 1 (even though I still think theyd get a seed higher than 8)? The Bulls will have to beat them at some point anyways. 

On a side note: I wonder if either of them Rose/Deng would play in the olympics this summer. If they play through this season both of them will need time to heal up and I wonder what might happen. I think it's more likely Deng may sit if he elects to have surgery, likewise Derrick may very well need this time in the offseason.

Id like to think theyd both sit out of the olympics, but I think anythings possible. If Deng needs the surgeory he will have no choice, but I know he REALLY wants to play for those chappy london folk so who knows. 

As for Rose, anybodys guess is a good guess where we stand now. For all we know, the injury could be completley gone by the time that rolls around. 

Without Rose and Deng we are a below .500 team.  With either one, we are slightly better than .500.

Without Rose and Deng, here are the teams we would lose to almost guaranteed:

Pacers
Sixers
Celtics
Knicks
Heat
Hawks
Magic
Nets (will probably give us a run for our money)

So with that list, I don't see .500 wins.  I don't trust any of the guys left to consistently step up on the offensive end (Brewer, Watson, Boozer).

Remember that sometime during the course of this season, Boozer, Noah, and Rip WILL get injured.  That's almost a guarantee with their history.

We are a deep team but they need Rose and Deng to be able to lead the bench.  That's why the second unit almost always has either one on the floor, usually it's Deng.