April 28th 2013, basketball fans throughout Chicagoland held their breath hoping that their hero would pop right up and get on with the game.  Unfortunately, their ‘superman’ was taken down by something worse than cryptonite, an ACL tear. That was the day that Derrick Rose, the Chicago Bulls star point guard jumped into the air during a playoff game versus the Philadelphia 76’ers and when he landed, he tore his ACL. With Derrick’s and the Bull’s future unsure, Chicago had to just go along with the ride to see if their star player would ever return.

ACL stands for anterior cruciate ligament; this is the ligament that connects the tibia to the femur. It stops the tibia from sliding too far forward and underneath the femur and from hyperextension of the knee. When someone tears their ACL it requires surgery and at least 6 months of rehab to recover. ACL tears are becoming all too common in sports but it is a lot easier for players to recover from such an injury due to all of the research that has been done. Still, recovery time all depends on the athlete. This is not an injury that you want to rush; for both mental and physical reasons. Mental, because the athlete has to trust their knee and have to trust that their knee is fine. Physical, because this is your knee after all, it is one of the main reasons why you can walk. The muscles around the ligament need to be sufficiently strengthened in order to avoid re-injuring the knee.

Mostly all athletes that work hard come back better than before they got injured. Some athletes come back really fast- Adrian Peterson- for example, and are completely fine. Others that come back fast, Robert Griffin III, are a little shaky at first because they do not trust their knee completely yet. ACL tears are becoming so common in sports that you continually hear of guys tearing them in all different sports.  The majority of these injuries occur in football and basketball due to the cutting and quick movements required. Some athletes that have torn their ACL’s are Ricky Rubio (NBA), Adrian Peterson (NFL), Robert Griffin III (NFL), Iman Shumpert (NBA), and Derrick Rose.

After seeing how fast Adrian Peterson came back, Bulls fans expected Rose to come back as fast. What they failed to realize was that Adrian Peterson was an exception to the rule. Peterson’s recovery blew people away with how fast he returned. Many people criticized Rose for not returning fast enough, but in reality it is his knee that was injured, so he knows it better than anyone.  He is the only person who would know when it was ready or if it still needed time to heal.. It also did not help having his brother telling the media when Rose would return.  On top of that, Adidas produced a video series called “The Return” on YouTube which made people believe that he would return even faster. Then the jokes and the memes came in making fun of Rose.  At this point Rose could have given in to the media scrutiny and played, but he knew what was best for he and his team. Rose did the right thing by not going back so fast, he took his time and got stronger. Even without Rose, the Bulls made it to the second round of the NBA Playoffs. There was no push from the team to rush his return.

Now Rose is fully recovered and is better than before believing that he gained five inches on his vertical. Rose has full confidence in his knee and it showed during their preseason games when he was dunking and landing on that knee like nothing happened. Many people wondered if he would still be as explosive and quick as he was before, the answer to that is yes. Rose has not missed a beat even for being out for 18 months. He is still extremely aggressive and will attack the basket like normal. He is also still making those acrobatic layups that just blow some people away. The world will see how Rose, his knee, and the Bulls do against LeBron and the Heat on Oct. 29th in Miami, the first game of the regular season. With a healthy Rose, the Bulls can be a real threat to Lebron and the Heat, and to all of the NBA. With Rose back, Chicago can begin to breathe again and watch Rose do what he does best, play basketball.