Jerry Colangelo, the USA Basketball chairman, wants to take a close look at Derrick Rose. With the World Cup of Basketball on deck, Team USA needs to know just how ready the Chicago Bulls superstar point guard will be this summer. Per the AP:
“I think he needs to find out just where he is physically,” USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo said Wednesday of the Chicago Bulls guard.
“So he is welcome to come to our camp, he is welcome to show us where he is. I think if nothing else, worst-case scenario, he practices and sees that he’s either not ready or he is ready. And if he’s ready, he has a chance to make the team.”
Rose had surgery in November to repair torn cartilage in his right knee, and the Bulls said he would miss the rest of the season. But he’s been running for a while and taking part in some practice drills, and both Chicago and USA Basketball coaches are interested in him doing more this summer.
“Chicago is encouraging him and encouraging us that they feel this would be good for him,” Colangelo said.
Rose was the starting point guard for the Americans when they won the world championship in 2010. He tore his ACL in his left knee in May 2012, costing him a chance to play in the London Olympics, and sustained the less serious injury to the other knee not long after finally returning to start this season.
Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau is an assistant on U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski’s staff, and Colangelo says the Americans will get reports on Rose. Colangelo may even decide to look for himself before training camp opens in Las Vegas.
The U.S. should have a much stronger team than the one that won the world championship four years ago. The 28-player roster pool the Americans named in January includes a number of players who competed there or in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
