Derrick Rose's Sad Limp To Basketball Oblivion

You can see it on the grainy videos online.  Tyrus Thomas grabs a rebound, lopes down the court, and feeds a streaking Derrick Rose who two-hand jams it on a hapless Goran Dragic. The Bulls' bench players theatrically pretend to hold themselves back from storming the court while Stacey King admonishes Dragic for trying to block the shot, for futilely exposing himself to posterization, for daring to exist in the same basketball universe as Derrick Rose.


It's the 2015 playoffs.  The Bulls, going toe-to-toe with a Cavs team expected to roll through the Eastern Conference like a monster truck over a pile of broken sedans, give the ball to Rose. Somehow, he gets off an awful, off-balance three and banks it in as the clock expires.  And, as the United Center explodes into rapturous anarchy and his teammates mob him and hold him aloft, Derrick Rose stares out into nothingness, no expression on his face, not even a cool, studied walking away from an explosion in slow-motion like this is a thing that is normal to me, the guy who blows up Apache helicopters full of drugs and counterfeit money and illegal reptiles expression, but almost like he has been disconnected from reality around him.  It is a blank mug.  It was less a catharsis than an exorcism from the unending series of catastrophic knee injuries and comebacks and hot takes and Bulls' front office skulduggery brought about by the deafening scream of 20,000 people who wanted nothing more than to believe in him again.


Derrick Rose's time with the Bulls reads less like a basketball career and more like a litany.  His knees, once a pair of pistons that pinballed him through defenders and powered his circus layups and soaring dunks, exploded into loosely-packed bags of ligaments.  The constant rehabs and battles with the media and a front office filled with Magoo Machiavellis brought an element of melancholy to his game.  Rose never again played only against other basketball teams, but against the ghost of his own self; watching Rose for the past three years was like watching a cash-in reunion tour Derrick Rose on the county fair and riverboat casino circuit.

Chicago's relationship with Derrick Rose came closer to a religious experience than basketball fandom.  Bulls fans became swept up in a cult preaching an endless cycle of Back and Not Back.  Rose's transition layups turned into prophesies.  One day, he would be Back, floating into the United Center in gilded robes, levitating over the hoop, teaching his teammates the Way of the Back, mastering the three point shot, and because this is a religious scenario he would also suddenly be good at defense too and he would vanquish all of the apostates who did not believe he was Back out of the Eastern Conference like so many febrile Karl Malones and then, he would lead the Bulls Back, he would lead the Bulls fans, his disciples of the Way of the Back into Grant Park and the fountain would turn from water into an ethereal light that would flow through him and turn him into Michael Jordan, which is what we all wanted him to be in the first place.

There is no other professional basketball player who could inspire an 
ironic shrine art installation unless there's a guy in the Adriatic League 
who starts an Ancient Order of the Trapezoidal Key

Derrick Rose's constant barrage of injuries (for fuck's sake, he broke his goddamn face last season and then spent months wearing a clear plastic mask that had "I am wearing an overwrought symbol of my transformation into a simulacrum of Derrick Rose" written on it) destroyed the Bulls' hopes of breaking through the Eastern Conference's LeBron hegemony.  Instead, his absences liberated fans from expectations, and the Bulls turned into an enjoyably scrappy outfit of hard-nosed defenders, tiny shoot-first point guards, and Carlos Boozer, who spent four consecutive years refusing to close his mouth for a single second and once got so excited screaming AND ONE that he punched Danny Crawford in the testicles. 

I will remember the horrified expression on the woman's face after witnessing Boozer's 
brutal testicular assault on my deathbed

Now, Rose joins Luol Deng, Kirk Hinrich, Tom Thibodeau, most likely Joakim Noah and possibly Taj Gibson in exile as the front office molds the Bulls into Fred Hoiberg's brand of draft lottery basketball.

Rose leaves the Bulls for the equally languid and dysfunctional New York Knicks.  The Knicks, bereft of draft picks, reliant on the maligned Carmelo Anthony, and owned by a monomaniac obsessed with his corporate retreat blues music, will subject Rose to an even more unforgiving and unhinged basketball media.  He has gone from the Lusitania to the Titanic.  The Bulls will be terrible next year with or without Derrick Rose.  But he takes with him a brief hope for resurrection, for an unstoppable drive and one of those looping layups, when Stacey King half-heartedly warns some hapless bench player about the futility of standing in the way of Derrick Rose and invokes the holy cry of Back, when you can see the MVP Derrick Rose straining to break free from his body sarcophagus.  But Derrick Rose is not back; he will never be back; that is, until the first Knicks game when he comes back, knees and the Good Lord permitting. 

The Huskening now with BYCTOM NBA Preview

At halftime, Northwestern held a 17-14 edge.  The defense had managed to keep all-everything running back Ameer Abdullah largely in check.  Justin Jackson was slithering around defenders and smashing into people.  Those gothic uniforms were pretty sharp.  Northwestern was holding its own as part of a transformation into Bizarro Northwestern, relying on the defense and a power running game instead of desperately trying to outscore people.  Then the second half happened and Ryan Field turned into Peter Lorre's spooky sanitarium.

Northwestern failed to score or move the ball particularly effectively.  The defense eventually succumbed and Abdullah shook free.  And this all happened under the watchful eye of thousands of Husker fans staining the stands red, letting their "go big red" chants echo through Evanston like they did 14 years ago on the San Antonio Riverwalk and who are I am sure all wonderful people who happen to like a different football team than I do but irritatingly and predictably took over an alleged home game and one of them threw nacho cheese on me.
 
Literally a Northwestern home game

Being outnumbered at home is part of the Chicago's Big Ten Football Experience and has been since time immemorial, so it's no surprise area Nebraska fans and roaming Husker vagabonds took over the stadium.  But we can do better, and Bring Your Champions, They're Our Meat is a Web Log devoted to ideas, innovation, synergy, thinking outside the box, achieving buy-in, shooting you an e-mail about that.  Last week, I proposed some concrete ideas on twitter that I will lazily regurgitate here for filling the stands with purple:

1. Hire a nineteenth-century ward boss to fill the stands with Civil War veterans
2. Invent the machine from Multiplicty, fill the standswith thousands of Keatons (assuming the multiplicity machine only clones keatons)
3. Tupac holograms
4. Construct a fake Dyche stadium on campus, tell visiting fans to go there, conduct game in peace and quiet
5. Hire a snooty maitre'd, only admit people in purple attire, but allow guests to borrow a gigantic purple sport coat for the evening
 
Mr. Purdue Pete, I am going to have to ask you to remove your hard hat
One time, I had to attend a function at a London club that originated in the nineteenth
 century that was all plush red carpets and muttonchop portraits and ossified 
stodginess.  I didn't have a jacket and was prevented from entering the establishment 
by a tail-wearing doorman who looked like he had seen action at Sebastopol, but he 
was gracious enough to lend me the house sportcoat which was designed for an 
enormous plutocrat grown fat on the plunder of empire.  I then spent the rest of the 
evening absorbing elbows like a Karl Malone opponent as other guests were able to sense 
that the guy in David Byrne's Stop Making Sense jacket was not important enough to 
remain unjostled in a race to talk to an actual important person.   

In addition, I suggest the athletic department strongly look into covering opposing fans with tarps, making Ryan Field into a speakeasy with a password like "Steve Schnur," or demolishing the stadium and replacing it with a field that has only one bleacher where I am the only spectator and can freely support the team and heckle Kirk Ferentz. 

Northwestern was certainly an underdog in this game and demonstrated that its defense is not a fluke.  There are five more games and three more wins to a bowl.  Only Notre Dame is a powerhouse and anything is possible in the Big Ten, the conference for dreamers and mystics.  But first the Wildcats need to make it through hell.

IOWA WEEK Y'ALL

Iowa is 5-2.  Somehow.  The Hawkeyes have not looked like world-beaters, although by Big Ten standards they are they are at the very least world insulters.  To be honest, I can't tell you much about Iowa football this season.  We have a finite number of minutes in our lives and no one outside of the Hawkeye state lies on his deathbed regretting that he did not watch more Iowa football.  You might be disappointed that you came to a college football blog with virtually no pertinent information about football, but you probably should have closed the browser window when you read that sportcoat anecdote.

The Hawkeyes once again feature human battering ram Mark "Heisman" Weisman who will be long celebrated in Iowa City for his ability to play multiple years in the backfield with all of his ligaments.  Jake Rudock seems entrenched at quarterback, despite Kirk Ferentz teasing a Colter/Siemian style quarterback rotation earlier in the month.  One can imagine the staid Ferentz thinking about making that change with the same disdainful look he had on his face when he learned that the Big Ten legalized the forward pass in 2003.

The 2005 All-Big Ten football team featured many athletes who served against 
the Kaiser

At this point, it seems that the Wildcats can hang with any team in the division.  Both teams see this as a winnable game.  And given that Iowa-Northwestern has been a surprisingly fervent rivalry in the last few years, I'm going to say throw out the record books.  Throw them out and invent a hideous CatHawk trophy to hoard in victory and rule over ancient Egyptians if we ever meet them in some sort of Stargate scenario.

BYCTOM NBA PREVIEW

I am really excited for the return of professional basketball.  In that spirit, please peruse the ultimate and essential guide to every possible important scenario in professional basketball in question and answer format.

How long will the new-look Cavs take to lead the Eastern Conference?

There are two ways to look at this.  One is to balance the advanced statistics and likely strategies that the Cavaliers will employ since regaining the services of the greatest basketball player on earth and his superstar teammates.  This is for chumps who sit around watching basketball and printing out reams of paper on dot matrix printers while wearing orange basketball statistics visors.  The best way to determine anything involving the Cavaliers is to practice golfcartmancy, a method of reading the future by analyzing the patterns and attitudes of the people who patrol the James estate in golf carts, as popularized by the time reporters set up a tent city and besieged his Cleveland-area mansion until we as a species could determine where he would play basketball next season.  In the wake of the media circus, James has taken more measures to protect basketball secrets by hiring additional golf cart men, decoy golf cart men who are actually people dressed like golf carts, and submersible golf carts used to patrol his property’s water and check for scuba-diving reporters should he decide to opt out of his contract at the end of this season.  After meticulously observing the movements and patterns of his golf cart men, it appears that the CLEVELAND CAVALIERS will make the EASTERN CONFERENCE PLAYOFFS.

Which Laker will die under mysterious circumstances during the season?

At some point, the Los Angeles Lakers are going to take a player out of the Staples Center in a body bag.  Maybe it’ll be Carlos Boozer, whose screams were never heard because he is pretty much always yelling and everyone who heard him yelling HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY ARRRRGHGHGHGHGHGH thought he was playing basketball.  Maybe it will be rookie Julius Randle, who vanishes after taking more than 10 shots.  Maybe it will be some other guy on the Lakers whose untimely death is notable because there was no prior evidence that played basketball professionally.  Maybe it will be Nick Young, whose Kobe-related obituary is already on file with the LA Times.  During the investigation, Byron Scott will refuse to use fingerprints, DNA, or any other modern techniques, arguing that if it was good enough for Allan Pinkerton, it's good enough for the Los Angeles Lakers. The murders would never be solved because they were all Speckled Banded by a mamba.

Will Derrick Rose regain his form and lead the Bulls to the Finals?

Derrick Rose will undergo an experimental Monkey's Paw procedure where he will wish for super strong knees.  His knees will indeed make him unstoppable but they will keep growing stronger and larger until he finds himself gradually turning into an anthropomorphic knee.  Derrick Rose's knee will lead the Bulls to the second round of the playoffs.

This is my most plausible prediction

Will the Phoenix Suns maintain their surprising rise?

The Phoenix Suns will be unstoppable this season because they added Zoran Dragic.  He and Goran will walk around off the court in matching shirtless vests as Double Dragic.  Mark Cuban will add Abobo from overseas to no avail.

What power plays does Jason Kidd have up his sleeve this season?

Kidd engineered a move to Milwaukee after attempting to seize control of player personnel from Billy King in Brooklyn.  Kidd had a tumultuous first year as head coach just a year after the end of his playing career.  He grew a comic book villain beard, oversaw a disappointing first half, orchestrated the first intentional beverage-related timeout, led the Nets to the second round of the playoffs, then feuded with his general manager, attempted to invade Silesia, invented the #trader hashtag, poisoned the Brooklyn Knight's jousting horse, and absconded to Milwaukee in the dead of night after vanishing from a Nets boardroom with a puff of smoke.  Once there, he made noises about letting the seven-foot Giannis Antetokounmpo run the point.  Jason Kidd may be capable of anything.  This season, he plans to coach with a goblet of wine in hand for emergency timeout situations, keep a bugout bag in his office, and deploy decoy Bango the Bucks spread throughout the arena to gather intelligence.

One has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because 
they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; 
therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one 
does not stand in fear of revenge

Where is Drew Gooden playing?  

Drew Gooden must play for every NBA team, and BYCTOM is a clearing house for Gooden movement.  Sadly, the Washington Wizards have retained his services for another season, but we can only hope he makes it to at least one other team by the end of the season.
 
The NBA is only 33.3% Goodened.  We can do better.

PIZZA CITY CALLS

Northwestern has two remaining home games, and both are winnable.  The 'Cats face a struggling Michigan team hellbent on defying road fields with stakes and climax with the possible ultimate showdown with Beck Man.  The possibly soon-to-be-erstwhile Illini coach may have helped salvage his job with a stunning win over West leader Minneosta.  The Illinois victory has thrown the West into further chaos.  Enjoy the last week of October because every football move must be evaluated not only in terms of bowl implications, but Hat consequences. 

Week 1

The 2011 football season finally arrives this Saturday with the Wildcats jumping right into the fire against a BCS opponent. Though Northwestern opens on the road against Boston College, the Athletic Department has prepared frenzied Wildcat fans by putting up an enormous 44-foot tall mural of Coach Fitzgerald on the South Tower to terrorize opponents, Evanston residents, and passers-by.

The Athletic Department plans to use the giant Fitz poster to disseminate
crucial information to Wildcat supporters. I'll be honest, even I thought it
was excessive to go back to the Lenin poster well on this one, but I could not
possibly resist-- the only way the Athletic Department could possibly goad
me into Soviet propaganda cliché more easily is if they announced they
were immediately changing the mascot to a tractor

Northwestern fans have been in a minor panic over the quarterback situation between a hobbled Dan Persa and near Ticket City Bowl hero Kain Colter who makes up for his inexperience under center with moxie and an alliterative 1950s superhero secret identity name. Northwestern will catch a break by dodging the Eagles' excellent running back Montel Harris who is nursing a knee injury and will not be plying his dark arts against the Northwestern defense. More worrying is the possibility of linebacker Luke Kuechly getting to Persa (if he plays) and sacking him hard enough to cause a minor disruption to the Earth's rotation that wreak meteorological havoc across the surface of the entire planet. This is because Luke Kuechly is 37 feet tall, carries an NCAA-approved battle-axe, is mostly made of malevolence, and trains in the off-season by supping upon the bones of the impertinent who dare disturb him in his lair.

The Dark Curse of the Kuechly can only be lifted if Lou Holtz
can successfully pronounce his name during a live telecast

The Wildcats will hope to set the tone early this year by avoiding erratic performances in non-conference games. This is a Northwestern tradition, dating back to contests against nineteenth century arch-rival Chicago Dental where Northwestern emerged barely victorious and covered with a series of worrisome bite marks.

FIBA BASKETBALL
This week, the FIBA European Championships begins in Lithuania. The tournament also goes by the colloquial title EuroBasket because the only way for it to be more European would be if the logo was a man wearing Capri pants jumping over a Trabant that is blaring disco music. Which would be better than the current theme song, featuring a lively group of Lithuanians belting out the exact sort of bland pop song designed by computers for international sports tournaments instead of a more satisfying Eurovision style imbroglio. At least Marijonas, Montas, and Mia have included the mystifying lyric "Who's gonna weep about losing?/Raise your glass it's time for a bruising," which is the motto of the world's most menacing Toastmasters chapter.

This year, the tournament has expanded from 16 to 24 teams. Unfortunately, FIBA Europe based their decision on how teams fared in qualifying rounds to determine seven of the teams that got their berth instead of a more entertaining system of payola and skullduggery. EuroBasket will also do away with the festive trapezoidal zone to use the more familiar American rectangle. Other new EuroBasket rules have made it illegal to temporarily reform Yugoslavia for the duration of the tournament, split into smaller teams after geopolitical crises, earn victories by promising bail-outs or otherwise take advantage of the Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis, or throw up the barricades. Everyone also must have Detlef Schrempf haircuts.

Bourbon intrigue is still legal at Eurobasket provided a
team can provide successfully provide a Bourbon

With the NBA lockout, there will be more NBA participation than usual. France boasts a roster including the NBA's Tony Parker (T.J. didn't quite make the cut), Joakim Noah, Nicolas Batum, and Beethoven in the Age of Romantics. Other notable NBA players include fake German Chris Kaman who was last seen challenging Indiana Jones to fistfights underneath rotating propeller blades, and a powerhouse Spanish team featuring all of the known Gasols, Rudy Fernandez, the mysterious Ricky Rubio, and Serge Ibaka. Of course, the most glorious revelation of Eurobasket is that the Slovenian team not only features 2009 playoff hero Goran Dragic, but also his brother Zoran.

A catastrophe divides Slovenia's team against itself

The team I'm most interested in is Great Britain's squad. The British squad features Chicago Bulls iron man Luol Deng, who is hoping to lead the newly-unified British team to a respectable enough record that they will be allowed to play in their home Olympics. His task will be harder this summer though. Former Bull and master of the difficult Ben Gordon why the fuck are you taking that shot there's 18 seconds on the shot clock and you are falling out of bounds with eight dudes surrounding you because you are literally on top of the opponents bench, oh you made it shot, Ben Gordon, will not be joining Team GB this summer. Unfortunately, it's not part of some long-delayed Reverse Benedict Arnold scheme on the part of Gordon or even part of some sort of insane triple-cross where he starts dunking on his own basket and then announces that he has Bosnian citizenship. Apparently, he's decided he'd rather not risk playing. The British team is also missing its talisman Pops Mensah-Bonsu, who is apparently unstoppable in low-level FIBA tournaments.

The other reason why I'm interested in the British team is because it is not only battling Europe's toughest basketball competition, but also the complete apathy of 99% of the population of the United Kingdom. Fortunately, youtube has a repository of videos from an organization called Back British Basketball that feature street interviews with people uninterested in basketball, and a heroically chipper young man with a megaphone who is attempting to shout at British people until they care about basketball. Here he is, for example, at the Britain-Macedonia game unleashing a Deng chant to the tune of Seven Nation Army in front of a group of bemused spectators. Surely such an effort is worth it to cheer for the team to not embarrass itself so badly as to be forced from the Olympics like a surly bar patron.

RAISE YOUR GLASS, IT'S TIME FOR A BRUISING

The excitement of Wildcat football is almost unbearable this time of year. Feel free to paint all of your unexposed skin purple at your place of business or erect enormous Pat Fitzgerald monuments at your home. They'll understand, unless the neighborhood children are afraid of crew cuts, intensity, and fists.