Derrick Rose is on the road again.
While the Chicago Bulls superstar is still not ready to return for action yet, Rose did join his fellow Bulls teammates Wednesday for a shootaround.
This marks the first time that Rose has traveled with the team on a road workout since undergoing surgery to repair the torn ACL he sustained during Game 1 of the first round of the NBA Playoffs in April.
Coach Tom Thibodeau said Wednesday that Rose has been around the whole time, and his superstar was getting acquainted with the team's defense and offense schemes, as well as his teammates. However, Thibodeau, who has fielded many questions regarding Rose's pending return, did not want to make Rose's workout session "that big of a deal."
"It's just the next step, and he's got to continue the things that he's been doing and the team has to continue to focus on our improvement and our opponent and then at some point he'll be ready to go," Thibodeau said, according to ESPN. "But he still has some time to go. Everyone has to be patient, but it's good to have him around."
Still, the Bulls have been cautious regarding the status of Rose's return, particularly regarding setting a return date. Though Bulls officials have stated previously that they expect Rose will be back on the court at some point this season, Thibodeau, in a familiar theme regarding a return date for Rose, stated once more that no date has been set for Rose's comeback.
"It's when he's ready," Thibodeau said. "So that's not anything that has changed from the start of the season. It's when he's ready. It's not going to be sooner, later, 'This is the target date.' It's just when he's ready. So he's doing practice, the predictable contact in practice. The next step will be regular practice. Then he has to be able to go through regular practice for a while. And then, if everything goes well, then he plays.
"But there's no time schedule, so it's everything according to plan. It's just the next step. There's several steps he has to go through. There's several more that he has to go through -- so everything's going well. Nothing has changed."
While Rose has largely been away from the specter of the media, rarely doing interviews and tweeting only regarding the conclusion of his Adidas commercial run titled "The Return," Thibodeau has indicated that Rose was closer to becoming a full participant in practice.
"It's definitely tempered, and obviously everybody is going to be excited when he comes back,'' Kirk Hinrich told the Chicago Sun-Times of Rose's pending return. "At the same time, it's about his well-being and making sure he's ready to go. Nobody wants to rush him back. He had a serious injury. He's one of the best players in the world, and you can't rush him back.''
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