Chicago Bulls' Rose seeing clearly on his plans to play
Even though he will be wearing a protective face mask and can't always see straight, Derrick Rose is ready to roll for the Chicago Bulls' season opener against Cleveland on Tuesday at the United Center.
Rose admitted blurry vision is still an issue as he recovers from a broken left orbital bone, suffered on the first day of training camp, but he plans to make it work.
"When I play, I just play with one eye," Rose said Monday at the Advocate Center. "Close the other eye until my vision is back clearer. I just close one eye and go out there and play. It worked out for me."
That doesn't sound like the ideal way to get through an NBA game against LeBron James and the Cavs, but Rose played fairly well in 10 minutes of action Friday in the preseason finale against Dallas.
"It helped with just confidence," Rose said of his return to game action. "I was playing with one eye, and you can't tell that I was playing with one eye. In any profession, that's just like you all with having just one arm or one hand, something like that, and typing.
"If you're able to do it, you're able to do it. If not, you've got to sit down. And I think I'm a pro. I was able to go out and play, and it was a lot of positives I took from that game."
Rose said he has shed some weight since last season, going to 203 pounds from 212. So he expects to get to the basket, despite the broken bone in his face.
"Same weight I was when I won MVP. So I feel a little bit more lighter," he said. "When I'm playing, I'm so focused on the game that you really don't know that you have (the mask) on until there's a timeout or something like that, and you gotta wipe it off. But other than that, I don't care."
It's not clear how many minutes Rose will play Tuesday. Expect caution.
Not a finished product:
Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg was asked about how he will approach his first official game coaching in the NBA. It will all be new, but he started preparing the day he took the job.
"That's what you do in the off-season and why you work so hard on late-game situations, what you're going to run after timeouts, how you put a game plan together," he said. "We've put a lot of work into what leads up to this first night. So it is just coaching. But a lot of preparation goes into it.
"We've still got a long way to go. We'll continue to build and get better in the areas we need. And I think we'll do that. We've already gotten better in the course of this preseason with the eight games we've had. And hopefully we'll continue to trend upward."
Bulls horns:
Cleveland's LeBron James missed the last two weeks of training camp due to a sore back, but he plans to play against the Bulls. … Gates open at 5 p.m. for Tuesday's game, and early arrivals can get half off food and nonalcoholic beverages from 5-6:30 p.m.