And so it begins, the seven-month obsession with every single step Derrick Rose takes, with every cut left, every opponent's hard foul, every spill to the floor. And it's not just Rose we'll obsess over, really, but every nit-picking detail of the Bulls' season, which begins tonight in Miami, with every Thibs substitution, every second played past 40 minutes by Rose and Butler, Deng, Noah and Boozer. It is going to be a painfully tense time between now and the NBA playoffs because so much is at stake and so much has been invested.

Derrick Rose said his injury was a blessing in disguise in that the Bulls learned to win without him, and that their playoff battles last season made them a better team. Peter G. Aiken/USA TODAY Sports

It's like the 1990-91 season, a lot like it actually, when Michael Jordan's Bulls were trying to catch the two-time NBA Champion Bad Boy Detroit Pistons, the team that had thrice beaten the Bulls in the playoffs on the way to those titles. And those Bulls, with Jordan leading the way, had to go through the Pistons the same way these Bulls, with Rose leading the way, have to go through Miami. Slaying the dragon that torments you is usually the only way to glory in the NBA and it is no different for these Bulls.

Taking down a sitting champion requires, yes, a wonderful team. But of even greater importance it demands a supremely skilled, relentlessly driven -- if not outright ruthless -- player in his physical prime who (usually) has suffered enough indignity in his basketball life to play with utter defiance from November through June, to attack the season as if it's a prize fight.

And what we're looking to see, beginning Tuesday night in Miami, is whether Rose, his body up to the task once again, is that player.

All we can see thus far, through 18 months of coming back from the knee injury and eight undefeated preseason games, is that Rose -- at 25 years old -- is so very different than he was at 23. You can see it and hear it in a 20-minute on-the-record conversation Sunday at the Berto Center.

When I asked Rose to tell me once and for all if he made the right decision to sit out the entire 2012-13 season, if he made the right call to turn a deaf ear to the critics who mocked him last spring because he didn't change course and ride to the rescue during the playoffs, Rose answered with absolute certainty that it's "the smartest decision I ever made."

Of all the things we talked about, the most impressive thing Rose said, in my opinion, was that he played his first four NBA seasons primarily off talent. He didn't stretch, didn't watch his diet, didn't obsess over his conditioning.

But he does now … all of the above … fanatically.