Chicago Sports: 5 most bizarre storylines in recent history
The D Rose Injury
The Chicago Bulls appeared to strike gold when they won the 2008 NBA Draft Lottery. They had a 1.7 percent chance to win it and they somehow did. They made the decision to select hometown kid Derrick Rose out of the University of Memphis. It was a strong pick for the Bulls, at least for a while. Rose was one of the best players in the NBA during the early stages of his Bulls career.
He was the rookie of the year in 2008-09 and then a three-time all-star in three straight seasons from 2009-10 through 2011-12. The highlight of it all was when he won the MVP in 2010-11. The Bulls looked like they were going to be a force in the NBA’s Eastern Conference for the next decade. They were a legit title contender and looked like the team that could stop LeBron James and the Miami Heat throughout the playoffs.
That, unfortunately, didn’t happen thanks to a bizarre thing that happened. Derrick Rose was out for a long time due to injury. He only played in 39 games (they only had 66 games due to a lockout) in 2011-12 and then missed the entire 2012-13 season because of an ACL injury. Then the next season in 2013-14 he only played in ten games. So over three years, he played in 49 games.
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The reason that it is strange is that there were reports that he was medically cleared at different points and he still never returned. Nobody would ever really question a man’s decision to stay out if he needed to in order to better his own life and career, but there was almost no context during a lot of his absence. After a while, the Bulls traded him to the New York Knicks and his legacy in Chicago will always be remembered as a “what could have been”.