Bulls Must Focus On Getting Healthy Over Top Seed In Playoffs
By Staff in News on Feb 14, 2012 8:40PM
By Ryan Glasspiegel
At 23-7, the Bulls are currently on pace to match last season’s feat of earning the number one seed in the Eastern Conference. As we approach next weekend’s All-Star break, it makes sense to look at the Bulls from a big picture perspective.
Because this season is moderately condensed as a result of the NBA Lockout, injuries and fatigue will play a bigger role than normal. Where the home field advantage that comes from earning a higher seed is usually worth scratching and clawing on a nightly basis in the regular season, this year’s playoffs will comparatively reward teams that are healthy and rested.
In the lockout-shortened 1999 season, where the play was sloppy as the season was compacted and players played themselves into shape, the 27-23, 8th-seeded Knicks knocked off the Heat, Hawks, and Pacers en route to an NBA Finals appearance. One of the reasons that the Knicks fared relatively poorly in that regular season was that Latrell Sprewell missed 12 of the 50 games while Patrick Ewing missed 13. While Sprewell essentially missed a month straight at the beginning of the season, Ewing was hampered throughout by a sore Achilles and knees and the games he missed were more randomly distributed. Sprewell would average over 20 points per game in the playoffs while Ewing’s injuries persisted as he averaged 13.1 points and 8.7 rebounds per game before being shut down in the middle of the Eastern Conference Finals.
Bringing it back to the Bulls, Derrick Rose, Luol Deng, and Richard Hamilton have all been hampered by injuries to various degrees.
Deng Missed seven games after tearing a ligament in his wrist against Charlotte Jan. 21. In the five games since he returned—in which the Bulls are 4-1—Deng has averaged 36 minutes per game. Hampered by muscular back spasms, Derrick Rose has missed two straight games after being limited in the previous three; back spasms are often caused by muscle overuse. Richard Hamilton, meanwhile, has played in just 11 of the Bulls’ 30 games as he nurses a groin injury.
It is in the Bulls’ long-term best interest to do everything possible to get Rose, Deng, and Hamilton healthy headed into the playoffs, even if it causes them to drop back 1-2 seeds behind the Heat, who are a half game back, and the 76ers (2½ games back). As long as they don’t fall behind the Hawks, Pacers, or Magic, it makes more sense for the Bulls to be at optimal health in a theoretical second round match-up with Philly and Eastern Conference Finals versus Miami than it does to get an extra home game while being banged up.
Former Chicago Tribune writer and current NBA.com analyst Sam Smith disagrees:
If a player is hurt, he says so and doesn’t play. No argument there. But if you can play, you play. There’s a bigger issue here, actually a few. One is if you’re the MVP. Sure, you owe your team. But you also are responsible to the game. The MVP often comes to a city once a season. Fans want to see him and pay a lot of money. Michael Jordan always understood that. So did Magic and Bird and all the great ones. Bird had a bad back for years. You’d see him being stretched out in timeouts. Maybe you say if he took off a month he wouldn’t have had to retire after 13 years. But he also understood what he meant to the game and to the fans. I remember after Jordan broke his foot. Doctors told the Bulls he shouldn’t play because there was a chance of a career ending injury. Jordan insisted he wanted to play and the fans sided with him over management, which was being cautious. And that was a team contending for nothing.
Smith goes on to pontificate about the good old days and the spoiling of contemporary athletes but overall he really misses the point as to why his readers are asking for limited minutes in droves. Taking his response bit by bit:
1) In addition to his team, Derrick Rose owes Bulls fans much more than those in opposing arenas. I am highly confident that an informal poll of Bulls season ticket holders would be overwhelmingly in favor of his missing the next few weeks in order to be primed for the stretch run. If Celtics fans had the benefit of a time machine, would they have traded a few months of Larry Bird’s regular season games in return for an extra year or two of his career on the back end? Almost certainly.
2) If you left it up to Rose, of course he would want to play and, if he plays, he will go full throttle. This is precisely what is so endearing about him--his entire consciousness is consumed with getting the most out of himself on the basketball court. He hustles every minute of every game he plays in and that makes him an exception in this league. However, this is also why the decision should not be left up to him. Tom Thibodeau needs to recognize the bigger picture that the best chance that the Bulls have at winning a championship--a goal that trumps all else and ESPECIALLY opposing fans--is predicated on Rose’s health, and act accordingly.
3) As the author of The Jordan Rules, Sam Smith of all people should remember that the young Michael Jordan was hubristic and not exactly the most aware long-term thinker. His broken foot occurred in the 1985-86 season, he missed 64 games, and he returned to a team out of contention against doctors’ wishes. It would be another five years before Jordan and the Bulls would win their first NBA Championship. The two events are independent and therefore hardly indicative of the ends justifying the means. Like Rose, it shouldn’t have been up to Jordan and team management should have stepped in and shown that long-term thinking adults were in charge.
(NOTE: If you have a Chicago Tribune archive pass and would love to see what Sam Smith wrote about Jordan returning from that injury, click here.)
Quite simply, if the Bulls are going to win a championship, they are almost certainly going to have to get through the Heat en route to it. Last year, the Bulls swept the Heat in the regular season but fell to them in five games in the Eastern Conference Finals as Miami had an extra gear that the Bulls couldn’t match. The only way it will go any differently this season is if the Bulls are healthy enough to take their game to another level.
This means that Hamilton, Deng, and especially Rose need to be in optimal condition. And given that they will not act in their long-term best interest, it shouldn’t be up to them.
Ryan Glasspiegel writes Sports Rapport. Follow him on Twitter @RGSpiegel.