A year ago, most people thought that Derrick Rose would be heading into inevitable retirement. Rose spent most of the 2017-18 NBA season dealing with injuries and there was no clear sign that he could ever return from being one of the elite point guards in the league. Luckily, after receiving a second chance from the Minnesota Timberwolves, the former MVP didn’t only manage to revive his NBA career, but he also succeeded to make himself fit in the modern NBA by becoming a reliable three-point shooter.
In 51 games he played, Rose averaged 18.0 points and 4.3 assists on 48.2 percent shooting from the field and 37 percent shooting from beyond the arc. Though his 2018-19 NBA season was ended by an elbow injury, Rose proved to everyone in the league that he still has lots of gas left in his tank. In an interview with 670 The Score , Rose’s agent, B.J. Armstrong, discussed the veteran point guard’s impending free agency.
Armstrong said that they are planning to keep all their options open when free agency hits next July. He also revealed that Rose may even consider a return to the Chicago Bulls, the team that drafted him with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2008 NBA Draft.
“I think we’re going to look at everything, we want to look at the situation,” Armstrong said, as quoted by Sporting News . “There isn’t a situation we would not look at because Derrick is still a very capable player. We’ll see what the Bulls have. There’s no secret, there’s no doubt that in his heart, Chicago will always be there. We’ll see. I don’t know what the Bulls are going to do at this particular time. … If it presented itself, we’d be open to that conversation. We’ll find out in due time.”
A Derrick Rose autobiography is landing this fall. It’s called “I’ll Show You.” https://t.co/gKAln2pOGZ
— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) March 26, 2019
Derrick Rose played the first eight seasons of his NBA career with the Bulls, where he helped them reach the Eastern Conference Playoffs seven times, including a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2011. Most Bulls fans will surely love to have Rose back in Chicago, but it remains a big question mark if the team feels the same.
The Bulls may be dealing with some backcourt issues, but according to Joseph Zucker of Bleacher Report , adding Rose doesn’t make much sense, knowing that they are currently in the middle of a rebuilding process. As Zucker noted, the Bulls would be better off targeting a point guard in the 2019 NBA Draft than signing Rose in the 2019 NBA free agency period.
At this point in his NBA career, it may be best for Derrick Rose to join a legitimate playoff contender which needs a leader in their second unit. As of now, it remains unknown which NBA teams are interested in acquiring Rose, but given his relationship with Karl-Anthony Towns, there is a strong possibility that the Timberwolves will consider bringing him back next summer.
