Rose will only return if Bulls make it to conference finals?

First of all they aren’t making it to the confrence finals without him IMO. Second of all he needs games to get back into a rhythm and into game shape in order to be effective. If he can’t make it back before the regular seson is over I wouldn’t want him to come back at all. I personally don’t think it’s wise to have someones first action of the entire year in a playoff situation.

That’s stupid. Why try to get acclimated while that deep in the playoffs?

if he does decide his body will allow him to play this season it would be better if he got a few regular season games under his belt. to get into game shape and so the team can learn how to play with him again.

Might as well take the season off and rest then.

They probably won’t win the division unless Rose comes back during the reular season and is healthy.
I’d say they’ll be the 4th, 5th or 6th seed.

They won’t beat Miami and the way things are going they won’t beat the Pacers either.

Any team thats a 4,5 or 8th seed in the East is in trouble any way.

If they do get past Miami what makes ppl think Rose can stop Parker, Westbrook or Paul in the Finals.

He wasn’t a great defender before the injury won’t be after esp. not this year.

I think people forget how long it takes to get acclimated after a serious knee surgery. David West had a down year all season last year but has been great this season, Danny Granger went 1-10 last night and won’t be himself for at least 2 months. It’s took Dirk about 2 months to get into his stride before finally breaking out the past two games, and to me he still looks like he can’t get much lift on his shot. It took Rubio a month and a half before he stated playing well, Iman Shumpert who injured his ACL on the same day as Rose has been terrible so far, shooting 31% from the field. Rose will be back to the D-Rose we all know and love, but it won’t be before sometime in April when he starts producing at a high level.

The Bulls supporting cast has exceeded expectation in the regular season but the playoffs are a whole different game. Rose needs to be fully healthy and get accustomed to playing with essentially a whole new set of players since a lot has changed with the role players since he went down. A team with Noah, Boozer and Deng as your top three players will not stack up in a seven game series with teams like Miami, Pacers, Knicks, Nets, heck even Boston at this point. Rose has to be his old dominant self which is pretty unlikely with a little less then 30 games left in the season after returning from an ACL injury. If the Bulls are smart, they’ll be happy with their over achieving season without Rose and accept that he needs more time to recover and get back into the rhythm, no point in getting him back if he can’t play the same consistently for them, ACL injuries are not easy to recover from just like that and you do not want to risk your best player further hurting himself long term.

All great points. Shumpert and Rose should be very close, if not all the way back to their old selves by the start of next season. Shumpert came back too early and is trying to play his way back. I can’t imagine Rose is much further ahead of where Shumpert is atm no matter how vigilant his rehab has been.

Bynum is gonna take forever.