Rose getting closer to full-contact in practice

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Jimmy Butler will make his second regular-season NBA start Monday night, as Luol Deng will miss his second consecutive game with a strained right hamstring, Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau said before his team hosted the Lakers at the United Center.
But Dengs status wasnt the only injury news the coach discussed in his pregame availability. Thibodeau updated the progress of sidelined point guard Derrick Rose, indicating that the former league MVP could begin full-contact practices this week.
Rose is very close. That full-contact practices will be the next step, Thibodeau said with a wry smirk on his face. It could happen this week.
He has to go through that for an extended amount of time. Thats not going to be, Okay, one or two days of contact and hes going to be out there. Thats not going to happen. Everyone has to be patient. Hes doing his part. Hes showing great patience. Everyone else has to, he continued. Hes got to continue to focus on the rehab. Our guys have to focus on their improvement and our opponent, and then when hes readywhenever it iswhen hes ready, thats when he comes back. Not earlier than hes ready, not later. Its when hes ready and our doctors have been on top of it from Day 1, so everyone just has to show patience.
Hes done great.
Perhaps sensing that the focus of the assembled media had shifted to Rose rather than the matchup with the star-studded Lakers, Thibodeau refocused the agenda to how his team has performed without the superstar.
I like our team. You guys, I guess you dont believe me, but I believe we have more than enough. If we do the right things, were capable of beating anyone, anywhere. We have to continue to do that and I still think we have a lot of room for growth, and thats the way I want us to be. We went through half a season last year without Derrick and so, the big thing, as I said, is you begin with the end in mind and for us, we want to be playing great basketball at the end of the season and we want to be as healthy as possible. So, with Derrick, its just being patient, let him handle the rehab, continue to listen to what our doctors have to say and then, we go from there, he explained, before delving into his preparation for the current season.
"The thing is, in terms of planning, we knew what the injury was last year, so we had all summer to map out how we were going to approach this. Sometimes it may be different when an injury occurs during the season and thats not something youre planning on, but we knew we could plan on this, so we mapped out what we thought would give us our best chance to succeed.

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