By ALEX HORTON
Contributing Writer
Having just finished up with summer league play, NBA teams getting ready for training camps at the end of the month, and there are looming questions going into the upcoming basketball season. The biggest question of the offseason is if Derrick Rose will come back and be as good as he was when he won the MVP in 2010-2011. And if he can, will he be good enough to have the Bulls compete with the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference?
Other questions surround another star powered team in the Oklahoma City Thunder and their point guard, Russell Westbrook. Will OKC finally break out of their postseason misfortune and be the ones to knock King James and the Miami Heat off their throne? And will Russell Westbrook be the one who can take them there.
Let’s start out in Oklahoma City with Russell Westbrook. Westbrook has been a means of scoring and energy by all means since he was drafted by the then Seattle SuperSonics in 2008. As a rookie he averaged over 15.3 points and 32.5 minutes a game. Not bad for a rookie who started 64 games. As Westbrook became more experienced in the league his scoring skyrocketed from 16.1 points a game in his second year in the league to 23.2 last season, a pretty big accomplishment playing with one of the best scorers in the league in Kevin Durant. In reliability he gets an A+, because he hasn’t missed a single regular season game his whole career. Which I have to say, is pretty good for someone who spends his time getting to the basket with no regard for his own safety, and becoming a human highlight reel. His assists jumped from 5.3 his rookie year to 8.0 in his sophomore campaign. Along with his rebounds staying around 4.5 to 5 a game every year, he is always a contender for best point guard in the league. But the question still looms how he will react to the surgery he had on a torn meniscus, which he suffered during Game 2 of the first round of the NBA Playoffs after colliding with Patrick Beverly of the Houston Rockets? And when he comes back, will he become a smarter basketball player contradicting his poor decision-making in past years? I am highly confident that he will be back to his normal self and become a more mature player. Â
Now over to the windy city itself and its historic franchise, Chicago Bulls. There are a lot of questions surrounding the Bulls but none bigger than will Derrick Rose be ready to compete at an NBA MVP level? Well, after almost 16 months of rehabbing from ACL surgery let’s hope so. D-Rose is considered to be the most electric point guard to ever play the game, getting to the basket when he wants with high-flying acrobatic dunks and layups, stopping on a dime and changing his direction in the blink of an eye. Rose’s rookie year was quite similar to Westbrook’s with 16.8 points a game in 37.0 minutes played while starting in 80 of the 81games he played in. D-Rose’s numbers skyrocketed year after year. They jumped off the page at you, scoring four more points a game in his second year at 20.8 and early five more the year after that at 25 points a game. Not to mention his assist totals steadily went up from 6.0 to 7.7 in consecutive years. Not too bad when he’s scoring close to 25 points a game. And his rebounding has stayed right around 4 to 4.5 a game since he entered the league, but with guys like Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah roaming the paint, he doesn’t have to be doing too much of that. The only problem with Derrick Rose is in recent years he has struggled to stay healthy and that is a big deciding factor when it comes to choosing a point guard.
This is a close debate but D-Rose is going to take this one. The Bulls whole offense goes through Rose and he is the leader of that team. There is also that shiny MVP trophy D-Rose has in his trophy case along with Rookie of the Year that are pretty convincing. No offense to Westbrook, but he isn’t the leader of the Thunder and the offense doesn’t always go through him like it does Rose. Rose just has more control over whether his team wins or loses compared to Westbrook. Westbrook is a great point guard and definitely one of the top-five in the league. Westbrook just turns the ball over too much and takes too many ill-advised shots. There just isn’t anyone I see but King James himself stopping Rose.
