MIAMI (AP) — Derrick Rose should be ready to play in Chicago’s next game.
If there is a silver lining that accompanies the end of the Bulls’ season – the final scene played out Wednesday night in Miami, where the Heat needed a huge late rally to beat Chicago 94-91 and close out the Eastern Conference semifinal series in five games – it’s likely the realization that Rose has five additional months to get his knee back to the level that carried him to the NBA’s MVP award in 2011.
With Rose, the Bulls lost four straight to Miami and were ousted in the Eastern Conference finals that year.
Without him, the Bulls lost four straight to Miami – their first four-game slide since that series – and were ousted again this time, albeit just one round earlier. Rose watched the finale from the bench, where he has been all season, and when the final horn sounded he walked on the court with his teammates, shook a few hands and then walked slowly up the tunnel toward the Bulls’ locker room.
“We’ll see. We’ll see,” is what Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau said when asked what the plan for Rose is now that Chicago has entered the offseason. “He has to keep working. I think he’s in a pretty good place mentally. If we were going to make a mistake, we wanted to make a mistake on the side of caution. We feel good about where he is. He has the whole summer to build more confidence. That’s the important thing.”
Add him to a Bulls team that outscored Miami by 29 points over a long stretch of Game 5 – on the road, no less – and Chicago could quickly find itself back as a title contender next season.
Carlos Boozer finished with 26 points and 14 rebounds for the Bulls, who were without Rose for the 99th straight game. Nate Robinson and Jimmy Butler missed potential tying 3-pointers on the final possession of the season for Chicago, which dropped the last four games of the series.
Robinson scored 21 points, Butler had 19, and Richard Hamilton 15 for the Bulls, who kept fighting all the way to the end.
“We’ve got warriors here,” Boozer said. “If we’re healthy next season, we’re going to be pretty good.”
LeBron James scored 23 points, Dwyane Wade added 18, Chris Bosh scored 12 points and Udonis Haslem finished with 10 for Miami, which outscored the Bulls 25-14 in the fourth.
“When you play the Chicago Bulls you wouldn’t expect any finish to be any different and anything less than that,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We knew right from the beginning of the series that we were going to have to earn everything we got. That certainly played out to be true.”
The Heat will play Indiana or New York in the East finals, with Game 1 in Miami on either Monday or Wednesday.
Read more at the Associated Press.
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