Derrick Rose news not really news at all

Derrick Rose says he will be ready to play when the Bulls open the preseason. Mike Imrem says, whoop-de-do! Rick West | Staff Photographer

Has Derrick Rose quit talking yet?

The more he opens his mouth, the more even his admirers have reason to wonder all over again where he was when the Bulls needed him late last season.

Rose told reporters this week in Spain or Serbia or Siberia or somewhere else that he expects to be ready to play next season whenever the Bulls are.

Be still my heart.

The only news here would have been if Rose blathered that his knee and head aren't a combined 500 percent healed yet.

Look, don't blame Rose for the widespread media attention afforded his recent comments. He was asked a question and not answering would have been inconsiderate to the host country.

Instead blame the attention on this being a slower period in Chicago sports than anyone could have imagined, starting with the White Sox' front office trying to win but they can't and winning not being a priority for the Cubs' front office so they won't.

Meanwhile, local fans still must count down the days, minutes and seconds until the Bears report to Bourbonnais next week. The Blackhawks' championship run is just now beginning to fade from the forefront.

Then there are the Bulls … wherever the Bulls are.

Well, we do know that Rose is romping around Europe (decide for yourselves whether he should travel around on a promotional tour for his shoe company when a couple of months ago he wouldn't play in a game the Bulls are paying him to play in).

In the current news-starved Chicago sports climate the media perks up when an athlete of Rose's stature belches. The Bulls' superstar point guard's transcontinental revelation was that his knee is 100 percent ready for the start of next season.

Whoop-de-do!

The only news here would have been if Rose said he wouldn't be ready to play when the season began, which always was a possibility depending on his mood.

Rose has babied his knee, so if his timetable is October, that's about 18 months since the afternoon he was injured and months longer than the anticipated recovery period. Delaying the return delayed the next critical step in the process, game action that now will have to take place later than sooner.

A good guess is that if Rose played late last season he would have suffered a setback, as often happens in cases like his. The knee would be OK, but the stress on other body parts leads to a pulled this or strained that. If that is Rose's destiny, better it had occurred last spring than will occur next autumn.

Regardless, mid-July is an odd time for a Rose update unless the bulletin involved his knee collapsing again and his new estimated time of arrival being late 2020.

However, consider the alternative on the sports digest:

The Cubs revealing that their proposed hotel across from Wrigley Field would have hot and cold running water; the Sox insisting they absolutely will not pay fans to attend games; word leaking that Bears new head coach Marc Trestman is planning to continue wearing a baseball cap; the Hawks announcing that they have decided to try to win the Stanley Cup again next season.

Each of those stories would be about as compelling as Rose telling media in Europe that he would be ready for next season. But whenever "Derrick Rose" and "knee" and "play" are clustered in one sentence …

That's enough during a slow news week to stop the presses and fill the airwaves, including 600 words right here.

Thanks for the help, young man, but please just stop talking now until you finally play in a game.



mimrem@dailyherald.com