It’s tough to disentangle how much of Rose’s reducing his forays to the paint and the rim is mental and how much of it is a drop in physical ability. In watching him night in and night out, he seems to be just as fast as ever, but he doesn’t appear to have the same vertical explosiveness he once did. Even if Rose never gets that burst off the ground back, he can still become an extremely effective player based on his speed, but he has to fundamentally alter his game and improve on aspects of his skillset that he never really needed so badly before. Maybe that’s what his struggles this season have been about: evolving and building a new skillset, a new path to effectiveness. That has to be the hope for Rose fans, because it looks like the version of Derrick Rose who can explode up and over opponents (hi, Goran Dragic) might be lost to us.
NBA Couchside 