Chicago Bulls veteran Joakim Noah has a message for everybody who's worried about Derrick Rose's injuries: "Chill the (expletive) out." Noah spoke passionately in defense of his teammate, who left Thursday's game against the Toronto Raptors with a hamstring injury.
Noah has heard it all about his teammate: Rose can't stay healthy, Rose isn't committed to the team and so forth. Shortly after Rose left the Toronto game in the fourth quarter with a hamstring injury, Noah spoke out against those taking aim at the point guard.
"Looking at it as a teammate, it's just frustrating because I feel like he's sometimes portrayed as something that he's not," Noah said, via CSN Chicago. "You don't come back from the injuries that he's coming back from without unbelievable commitment, you know what I'm saying?
"I know how much he cares about this game," Noah continued. "I see it every day. I think we're all in this together and this is not a one-man team, but at the end of the day, we need him. We need him. I just, I don't want to see him down. I know sometimes it's frustrating, you got injuries, you got tweaks. Every time something happens to him, people act like it's the end of the world. And that's f- so lame to me. Relax. Like, OK, he's coming back from two crazy surgeries. Obviously we're being conservative with him, and when things aren't going right, he's got to listen to his body more than anybody. So everybody needs to chill the f- out. I mean, I'm sorry for cursing, but I'm really passionate. I don't like to see him down. And he doesn't say that he's down, but I don't like it when, like, people portray him and judge him. 'Cause it's not fair to him. It's not."
Rose called the injury minor and said it felt like cramps, a likely side effect of having missed two years of basketball. He said he would ice it, see if he could practice Friday and hopefully be ready to play on Saturday against the Indiana Pacers.
