ESPN

CHICAGO -- The first person on the court the moment Derrick Rose crashed to the floor was Doug Collins, waving frantically for the Chicago Bulls doctors and trainers to come quick to Rose's rescue.

Before anybody else knew exactly what was wrong with Rose, Collins knew. Yes, Collins was the coach of the Bulls' playoff opponent but in those particular moments at the end of Saturday's Game 1, with Rose laying in agony on the court, Collins could feel and understand Rose's pain more than anybody in the building, Rose's teammates and coaches included.

Once upon a time Doug Collins was Derrick Rose, a schoolboy star from the state of Illinois who'd become the first overall pick in the NBA draft, a point guard who as a very young man would lead his team deep into the playoffs. And now, in a moment he wouldn't wish on anybody, Collins and Rose would share something else: a ripped up left knee.

Read the entire story.

There's always this feeling, when a team does nothing before the NBA trade deadline, of being left out, especially when you think your team is close as-is to winning a championship. Especially when a key player has been injured all season and when the perception is that a tweak here or there could mean the difference between beating or losing to the Miami Heat in a seven-game series.

So you look at some of the players who changed teams Thursday -- Stephen Jackson, Richard Jefferson, Nick Young -- and it's understandable if you feel this was an opportunity missed. They're all guys who can do the one thing the Chicago Bulls aren't positively great at -- putting the ball in the basket with little or no help.

Thursday, at 2:15 p.m. Central time was the Bulls' last chance to add somebody who can do that. They could have added Young, particularly, for what amounts to a ham sandwich. Instead, the Bulls did probably what they should have done: nothing. That's right, the Bulls stood pat, and it might very well wind up being the right thing. And nothing drove that point home like the victory over Miami on Wednesday night.

Read the entire story.

You would think from the hysteria about town that the Bulls were struggling through a losing streak, that they were middle of the pack or worse, that they had issues in the locker room, or undefined roles or a problem between the star and head coach. You wouldn't know from all the screaming and crying over Rip Hamilton's shoulder injury that the team being fretted over has the best record in the Eastern Conference ... oh, make that the best record in the entire NBA. You'd never know that in the context of a season defined by injury and misfortune that the Bulls might just be living under a lucky star.

Read the entire story.

We've reached the point of attrition in this physically devastating NBA season where a case of back spasms amounts to little more than rest.

Once again, circumstances force any discussion of the state of the NBA to begin with health, or the lack of it. While the Bulls plot how to treat Derrick Rose's back spasms and win a couple of road games in the meantime, they have to thank the basketball gods they aren't the Los Angeles Clippers, now in despair over the loss of Chauncey Billups for the rest of the season with a torn Achilles, or even the Denver Nuggets, trying to keep their edge the next month or so without Danilo Gallinari.

To that end, you know what the Bulls need a lot of to stay in serious contention between now and the end of June?

Plain old dumb luck.

Read the entire story.

WASHINGTON -- More than 24 hours later the topic of fascination was still Sunday afternoon in Miami. The missed free throws, nearly stealing a win without Luol Deng and C.J. Watson, the contentiousness of the growing rivalry, the disappointment, the equality of the two best teams in the Eastern Conference, maybe the entire NBA. The Chicago Bulls had just bounced back to beat the Washington Wizards on Monday night, but even that had to be viewed in the larger context of Bulls and Heat, Heat and Bulls.

So I asked Derrick Rose what he took away from all that happened Sunday in Miami, and without hesitation he said, "That we're damn good."

Read the entire story.

Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon debate how the Bulls will fare without Luol Deng.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- This isn't the start anybody envisioned. No reasonable expectation predicted desperate struggles with the short-handed and suddenly reduced Los Angeles Lakers and the inconsequential Golden State Warriors. No responsible forecast had the Chicago Bulls, two games into the new season, shooting 41 percent and stinking out the joint on the defensive end.

Nothing we saw last season, not even that Eastern Conference finals loss to the Miami Heat, suggested that the Bulls would start the first two games looking like a middle-of-the-pack team in this new season of great promise, in need of a longer training camp or more preseason games or ... something.

Read the entire story.

I'm sitting here obsessing over scouting tidbits about kids born, incredibly, in the 1990s. Upside, downside, wingspan, vertical leap, 3-point range, coachability, footwork, defensive instincts, stretch-4s. I have convinced myself beyond a shadow of a doubt that a kid I have never seen play in person or on television, a 6-10 Latvian shooter named Davis Bertans, is exactly what the Chicago Bulls need. Once again, he's a shooter. Remember what none of the Bulls could do in the final minutes against the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals? They couldn't shoot. This Bertans kid, if I believe what I read and am told by people who get paid to nail these things, can not only shoot it, he can shoot it with range, he can shoot it after putting it on the floor and that he's a quick draw. Did I mention he's 6-10?



Read the entire column.

MIAMI -- Games like the Bulls' loss Sunday night are why there was so much angst in Chicago at the NBA trading deadline in late-February when team executives decided not to make a deal for a big-time scorer, when they decided to stand pat and go into the playoffs with the roster they had, the roster with just one legitimate defense-wrecker. Don’t get me wrong, given the team’s youth, upward arc and the wisdom of looking at the big picture, Gar Forman and John Paxson probably did the right thing keeping talented young bigs Taj Gibson and Omer Asik, who are so much more difficult to find than a shooter.

Read the full story.

CHICAGO -- The Chicago Bulls can get away with shooting 34 percent as they did in Game 2 against the Miami Heat on Wednesday night. They can get away with Derrick Rose and Luol Deng throwing up one brick after another. The Bulls can even steal a victory against an elite opponent when they miss free throws and misfire on one 3-point attempt after another.

Read the full story.

ATLANTA -- By the time LeBron James announced his "Decision" that he was going to Miami to join forces with All-Stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, the Chicago Bulls had become an NBA afterthought. They'd been rejected by the hometown kid, Wade, and by arguably the best player in the game, James. There were more people sending condolences to the Bulls than predicting they'd reach the conference finals within 10 months.

Fortunately for the franchise, Gar Forman, the team's general manager, wasn't wallowing in pity.

"There was no time for despair," Forman recalled Thursday night, "because while it was unlike any free agent class in league history there were also more teams with money than there were players to give it to. We had Plan A, Plan B, Plan C and Plan D lined up. We knew we'd improve our team. There was no time to feel sorry because we had to move to the next plan and the next guy."

Read the entire story.

CHICAGO -- Larry Drew knew all the discussion over Derrick Rose taking 32 shots Sunday night in Atlanta's victory over the Bulls wasn't going to sit well with the league's newly minted MVP.

The Atlanta Hawks coach wanted Rose to take 32 shots again Tuesday night in Game 5 or, for that matter, 42. The Hawks had just shown they could win a playoff series, against the Orlando Magic, by allowing the opponent's best player, Dwight Howard, to essentially score as many points as he wanted as long as the Hawks kept the Magic's role players in check. What Drew did not want, but what he suspected would happen, was for Rose to respond to the criticism by getting his teammates engaged in the game& which is exactly what happened.

Don't get me wrong, Rose's 33 points were critical to the Bulls' 95-83 victory, which gave them a 3-2 series lead. But finding the balance they didn't have Sunday night in Atlanta was what enabled the Bulls to win Game 5 and is exactly the way they need to play on Thursday if they're going to close out this series in Atlanta or, looking ahead a bit, legitimately challenge the Miami Heat if the two meet in the Eastern Conference finals.

Read the entire story.

CHICAGO -- It was just prior to tipoff and John Calipari, Derrick Rose’s coach for his one year of college basketball at Memphis, had a question for his former pupil. “I said to him, ‘Derrick, how’s the ankle?’ He said, ‘It’s fine.’ I said, ‘Really, how’s the ankle?’ And he said, ‘It’s fine … just watch me.’”

You’d think if a player was ever going to confess an injury it would be to his coach, the guy who convinced him to leave home and move hundreds of miles away, a man he could still be playing for now if he’d decided to stay in college. But Rose wasn’t going to admit to his coach his bum left ankle was bothering him, even though it sure as hell was bothering him.

Why would he admit it to his coach when he wouldn’t admit it to himself.

You can look at Rose’s 10-for-27 shooting and his eight turnovers and say it was a subpar night for a player who accepted, to complete adoration, the league’s MVP Award from commissioner David Stern before Wednesday's 86-73 win over the Hawks in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. Those obsessed with metrics and statistical analysis will do just that.

Read the full story.

CHICAGO -- A critic could lose his edge trying to find fault with the Chicago Bulls ... until Monday night.

Rarely had the Bulls done anything wrong. They didn’t lose three straight games all season. They had, by any reasonable count, six or seven bad nights in a regular season that lasts 5 ½ months. The Bulls came closer to reaching their maximum potential than any team in the NBA this season, which is why Tom Thibodeau was named the league’s Coach of the Year Monday and why Derrick Rose will be named MVP any time now.

But a critic can have a field day between now and Wednesday night, because the Bulls violated the first tenant of big-time competition: they didn’t respect the opponent. The Bulls probably wouldn’t admit it, but the Hawks knew it, and so did pretty much anybody who’s seen the two teams play all season.

An Atlanta team in desperate need of a shot of confidence got it from the most unlikely source: its opponent. The Bulls decided to join Game 1 in progress, after the Atlanta Hawks had built a 10-point lead and began to feel good about themselves. Once interested, the Bulls cruised into the lead, then became passive once again, and the Hawks, probably relieved, found themselves hanging tough with a team they’d been battered by in two late regular-season games.

Read the entire column.

CHICAGO -- It's not a long resume Derrick Rose has put together, but it's pretty darn impressive: Back-to-back state high school championships, a trip to the Final Four in his only year in college.

But Rose, as is his nature, was concerned primarily about what was missing from that resume, which is to say a playoff series victory. There were two failed closeout chances, one against the Boston Celtics two years ago as a rookie and the second just Saturday in Indianapolis. Patience is no virtue for a kid who wants to win a championship, and Rose was starting to long for the old days when he was 17, 18, 19 years old.

Read the entire column.