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NEW ORLEANS -- Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose will play when his team takes on the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday night, two days after he had to leave a game with back spasms.

“

Somehow this notion of guys sitting out games ... pretty soon we'll be at the point where a guy sits out the whole season and just plays in the playoffs if he can get there. I don't get that.

” -- Tom Thibodeau

"[My] back is feeling better," Rose said following Wednesday's shootaround. "I should be ready to go tonight; game-time decision. I'm going to see how it is when I go out there and I should be all right."

Rose, who also has been battling turf toe, left Monday night's win over the New Jersey Nets after playing just 11 minutes.

He said it was nice having Tuesday off to rest.

"It was great, man, laid around the whole day," Rose said. "I really don't get that much time to do that. But since I'm out here, I don't know too many people out here, so I had the whole day to myself.

"Treatment the whole day. Got stim (electrical stimulation) on my back, a massage, so I should be all right."

He said he's not worried the back issues will linger like the turf toe.

"No. It's something that just happened," he said. "I haven't had back issues since high school. So I know this will easily go away.

"It feels a lot better, where I'm able to move. [Monday] night it seemed like it locked up on me. But I'm fine now. Hopefully, I'll be playing tonight."

Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau said he remembered Rose dealing with back problems last season.

"He had it one time last year and it was similar. It was one game, then the rest, then he was fine after that," Thibodeau said. "And never had it again. But I guess he's had this since high school. I think he knows how to deal with it pretty effectively.

"I just want to make sure he's feeling good tonight, that's all."

Thibodeau rejects the notion that players healthy enough to play should be rested.

""To me, obviously if a guy is hurt or injured, he shouldn't play," Thibodeau said. "But if he can play, he should play.

"Somehow this notion of guys sitting out games ... pretty soon we'll be at the point where a guy sits out the whole season and just plays in the playoffs if he can get there. I don't get that. But I certainly don't want him to play if he's injured. To me, there's a big difference there. We don't any of our players to play if they're injured. And that's the balance that you have to strike."

Thibodeau has been scaling back on practices and finding other ways to let his players rest during the compressed schedule forced by the lockout.

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"Right now our schedule, even though we're on the road, [the games] are spaced out," Thibodeau said. "We're not dealing with back-to-backs right now. If he gets the proper amount of rest, as with all our players ... we've scaled back on a lot of things. Sometimes it's not just the minutes a guy plays in a game, it's what you're doing on your off days also. So if you've cut back practice time and you've cut back shootaround where you're doing more film and that sort of thing, so you can get rest that way also.

"So I think how you pace your team is important."

Rose said the fact the Bulls have proven they can win without him is not a factor in deciding whether to play. And he's not taking the Hornets for granted, despite the fact they've lost six in a row.

"Hell no. We still know that we've got to go out here and play this game," Rose said. "They're an NBA team. They have good players on their team. They've got some people that are nicked up on their team, but they might come back. So we still got to go out here and play this game."

Nick Friedell covers the Bulls for ESPNChicago.com and ESPN 1000.

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Chicago Bulls beat reporter

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Nick Friedell is the Chicago Bulls beat reporter for ESPNChicago.com and ESPN 1000. He joined the staff in April of 2009 after serving as an editor and contributor for Yahoo! Sports.