It was the 26th of December, and the Chicago Bulls, who had just played Christmas Day, were about to tip off their second game in two days. Richard Hamilton, the veteran guard who had come to the Bulls to be the final piece of a championship puzzle, told me to listen up.

This season, Hamilton said, was going to be like no other. Teams would need to be more patient than ever before; players would, too. They were about to put their bodies through hell. Not just the three games in three nights, but the four games in five nights, the seven games in 10 nights, the weeks without practice and necessary rest and recovery.

Derrick Rose's ACL tear Saturday was the latest -- and, by far, the most serious -- injury the Chicago Bulls guard endured in a lost season. Dennis Wierzbicki/US Presswire

Hamilton didn't predict unprecedented injuries that day; he guaranteed them.

Players were beginning a season without a full training camp. They'd also missed the period before training camp when they would wander in after Labor Day and work out under the watchful eye of the team's training staff for three weeks, maybe a month. The lockout eliminated all that. And the season began anyway, a money grab for both sides, neither of which wanted to lose another dime.

Derrick Rose was doomed the moment the owners and the players' union signed that agreement. I've talked with multiple trainers who work with NBA players. They say very few -- if any -- athletes in the NBA put the pressure on their joints and move their bodies with the torque Rose does. These opinions weren't offered Saturday, in the wake of Rose tearing his ACL; they were offered in great detail weeks ago, when Rose was trying to come back from one injury, then the next, then the next. What's that old song: "The leg bone's connected to the hip bone ... ." Well, it is. Everything is connected, and when Rose hurt his toe, it affected his hip, which affected his knee. And he never had the time, in this compressed season, to condition himself the way he had previously -- the way he would have this season. The kid, before now, had played in 280 of 286 games since he left Simeon High School. If not Ripkenesque, it's still damn good at 98 percent participation. In other words, Rose didn't miss games -- until this winter.

He's not the only one. Dwight Howard, who had played more than 550 NBA games since high school, played in 98.7 percent. He missed seven games. If not Superman, it's Ironman. Yet, Howard, after back surgery, is done for the season, just like Rose. Old guys such as Chauncey Billups (Achilles) are done for the season, as are young pups such as Ricky Rubio (knee) and Iman Shumpert, who like Rose crashed to the court Saturday without contact.

Injury avoidance or maintenance has been the key to the entire season. You think Gregg Popovich didn't know what he was doing when he would simply sit certain players at certain times? Of course Pop knew. Rip Hamilton knew, too. At one point, when Rose wanted to play through an early injury, it was Hamilton who said to him, "You've already won the MVP award; you're playing for a title now. You can't rush back."

Hamilton himself missed 38 games this season with various injuries. He endured all the whispers locally, that he'd never make it back this season to contribute, that acquiring him was a bad move. And Hamilton would say to me every time we talked, or every time another player went down with a serious injury, "You know this is different, don't you? You know this season is a killer, don't you? You have to resist the urge to rush back because your body ain't making it through this if you don't listen."

One after another, players would go down. Players of significance, we're talking. Al Horford, Brook Lopez, Eric Gordon, more recently Ray Allen. Hamilton would say, "See, I told you. There's nothing like this season."

So, yes, even if it's impossible to predict, it had dawned on me that Rose -- given the fury of his drives to the basket, the way he lands on one leg, the force with which he plants so violently, sometimes awkwardly -- was a prime candidate to suffer one of those devastating leg injuries. Having lived through Chicago sports as long as I have, it seemed Chicago-like to first lose Jay Cutler to a freak hand injury just when the Bears were rolling people, then lose Rose when the Bulls were as close to winning a championship as anybody else in the NBA.