Breaking Down a Weird Derrick Rose Stat From This Season

The Chicago Bulls lost to the East-leading Cleveland Cavaliers this past Thursday night, but it wasn’t because of Derrick Rose‘s doing. The former MVP logged his seventh game of 25+ points or more in a game this season. The Bulls were 1-6 in those games (until the next night).

After the Bulls lost their third meeting against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers this past Thursday in Cleveland, a particular stat arose from the post-game chatter.

ESPN’s NBA account posted a stat line graphic of Derrick Rose’s performance — a really good one — from Thursday’s loss. In just under 31 minutes of action, Rose scored 28 points on 11-of-19 shooting from the field with seven rebounds in the 106-95 loss to the Cavaliers.

Notice the latter of this tweet.

Before this past weekend’s games against the Toronto Raptors and Los Angeles Lakers, Rose had only scored 25+ points in seven of the 46 games he’s played in this season. On top of that, Rose and the Bulls are 1-6 in those games where Rose scores 25 or more.

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That’s just weird.

(Times were a little bit different for Rose and the Bulls in the 2010-11 season, but when Rose scored 25+ points in that season, the Bulls were 27-11 on their way to a 62-win season.)

But, with the Bulls season hanging on by a thread in the Eastern Conference standings — they lead Detroit by two games for the final playoff spot — the Bulls are getting “Good Rose” at a good time.

Prior to Rose’s 26-point performance this past Friday against the Raptors — the East’s second-best team at the current moment — the Bulls had only won one of the seven games Rose’s offense game reminded fans of the old Rose.

So, I took a look at the details of each game Rose scored 25+ points.

• No. 1, Nov. 5 against the Oklahoma City Thunder: Rose scored 29 points on 12-of-25 shooting in the first of two wins for the Bulls over the Thunder this season. Jimmy Butler chipped up with 26 points on 8-of-20 shooting, but made four of his five attempts from deep.
  • Here’s the nugget: Bulls not named Rose or Butler scored 49 points on 20-of-45 shooting from the field.

• No. 2, Dec. 18 against the Detroit Pistons: Rose scored 34 points on 14-of-34 shooting in a four-overtime loss to the Pistons at home. The upside for Rose is he only attempted three shots from beyond the arc. Nothing else about that game made sense.

• No. 3, Dec. 26 against the Dallas Mavericks: Rose scored 25 points on 12-of-20 shooting in the loss to the Mavs in the second game of a back-to-back set.

• No. 4, Jan. 20 against the Golden State Warriors: Rose dropped a game-high 29 points against the defending champions at home, but the Warriors slaughtered the Bulls by 31 points.
  • Note: If you took away Rose’s shooting numbers, the Bulls shot just 25-for-78 (32.1%) against the Warriors. That’s terrible, no, wait, that’s god-awful.

• No. 5, Jan. 22 against the Boston Celtics: Rose scores 27 points on 10-of-21 shooting from the floor, Butler scores 28 points on 10-of-20 shooting to go along with 14 rebounds, but the Bulls got nothing else outside of Pau Gasol‘s 18 points.
  • Take away the Rose/Butler/Gasol trio, the Bulls scored 28 points. This isn’t James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. But, it is pretty bad from “the others” for the Bulls.

• No. 6, Feb. 5 against the Denver Nuggets: With Jimmy Butler exiting the game early because of the knee injury that’s currently has him on the shelf, Rose looked to win the game by himself. Rose finished the loss with 30 points on 27 shot attempts, nine rebounds and eight assists, and finished with a 37.4 USG%(!) that night.
  • Butler’s injury was the big takeaway from this loss, plus Gasol missed this game with an illness, so the Bulls were already shorthanded before Butler’s knee injury.

• No. 7, Feb. 18 against the Cavs: Rose scored 28 points on 11-of-19 shooting in the first game for the Bulls after the All-Star break. With Butler, Joakim Noah and Nikola Mirotic all on the shelf at this point, the other Bulls shot 26-for-74 (35.1%) from the field.

Rose and the Bulls made it 2-6 this past Friday against the Raptors and Rose had a partner in crime for the second win.

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No, it wasn’t Butler.

Nope, it wasn’t Gasol.

It was … Doug McDermott.

Yes, Doug McDermott scored 30 points during an NBA game. That totally happened.

And he looked good doing it, too.

The point with this is simple: When Rose is looking like the explosive Rose again, he hasn’t had too much help along the way. There’s been some pretty clear examples of that along the way. (I don’t advise it, but if you go back and watch the Warriors game from last month back, you’ll see what I mean.)

The Bulls’ inconsistencies are pretty clear at this point and these unbalanced performances from Rose and the Bulls document that quite well.

Next: Derrick Rose is Looking Like a New Player After the ASB

Plus, Rose’s game didn’t really take off until the turn of the new year this season (five of these aformentioned eight games have happened since Jan. 20), and by that point, the Bulls were already trending downward and bitten hard by the injury bug.