With Ugly Civil Trial Over, Derrick Rose Looks to Save a Career in Decline

NEW YORK — He spent 16 days wearing a suit and tie instead of a blue and orange practice uniform. He spent more than half of October sitting in a Los Angeles courtroom while the rest of his team got to know one another 3,000 miles away. The details of his sex life were exposed to the public. His absence forced his bosses to answer questions they didn’t want to field.

This, it’s safe to say, was not how Derrick Rose or the Knicks envisioned this preseason playing out, certainly not when just two months earlier Rose was “thanking” the Bulls for granting him “another start” by trading him to the Knicks, and certainly not when in late September Knicks president Phil Jackson was blowing off questions about Rose and saying he didn’t “anticipate” Rose missing any part of training camp or preseason games.

Then the particulars of the civil suit filed by Jane Doe against Rose, alleging that Rose and two friends raped her, began to trickle out.

On Sept. 1 we learned, courtesy of Think Progress, that Rose had disclosed, under testimony, that he was unaware of what “consent” meant. More sordid revelations followed. Rose’s law team was reprimanded by the judge overseeing the suit for “shaming” rape victims. Soon after the LAPD confirmed that it was investigating the case.

The suit went to trial, and eventually, after two weeks of testimonies, Rose was found not liable. It’s now “extremely unlikely,” according to Sports Illustrated legal expert Michael McCann, that any criminal charges are leveled against him.

And so Rose returned to New York on Thursday eager and interested to move past the civil suit.

“Oh man, it felt like heaven to be out there, man,” Rose said while talking to reporters for the first time since leaving for L.A. “I got through my little situation, but I’m happy to be focusing on nothing but basketball right now.”

Rose did answer questions about the case. He acknowledged that the accusation made against him was “serious.” He admitted he made a mistake by putting himself in “this situation and I had to get myself out of.” He said he was “praying” for Jane Doe but later added, “the only thing that really hurt me was missing my son’s birthday party.”

To date no charges have been filed against Rose. The police haven’t questioned him. Also, a jury has decided Rose’s account of the night in question is more believable that Jane Doe’s.

You might not like it. You might be repulsed by some of Rose’s more unsavory actions and comments. But as things stand now, Rose, technically, has done nothing wrong. Whether fans or the media feel the same way is irrelevant. Such is life in the world of professional sports, where a man suspended for allegedly choking his wife can be responsible for getting the final out of a baseball game and bring tears of joy to the eyes of millions.

The Knicks aren’t making it to the NBA Finals this season, but if Rose comes close to replicating his MVP-level outputs, Knicks fans will have no qualms about showering him with a applause.

Any breakdown of Rose’s game has to start with his health. So it goes for a player who’s seen both legs operated on and played just 100 games between 2011 and 2015, even if he is just 28.

The good news is that Rose is coming off his healthiest campaign since his 2011 MVP season. He missed just 16 games last year, and those were due to an orbital fracture he suffered in the preseason. For the first time in four years his lower body held up.

This is where an optimistic case for a comeback season from Rose begins. Sure, his basic numbers last year (16.4 ppg, 4.7 apg, 42.7 FG%, 29.3 3P%) were average, and yes, the advance stats paint an alarming picture (ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus had him ranked as the 69th best point guard in the league).

Ask Rose, though, and he’ll tell you there’s a simple explanation for these woes.

“I was seeing two baskets,” he said to Bleacher Report during training camp. “And I’m running top speed along the way. Just think about that with depth perception, you know what I mean?”

The orbital fracture left Rose seeing double in his left eye and blurry images when he looked down.

“But, if anything, it made me a lot better, because it made me pick and choose whether to take my shots,” Rose said. “I couldn’t come down and force shots the way I wanted to, so it made me be more patient.”

So which of the two baskets would he aim for?

“Man, whichever one is closer,” Rose said. “You know what I mean? For real, I can’t think of any better way to explain it.”

Rose said the double vision ceased being an issue around mid-February (though he conceded that he still occasionally gets blurry vision when looking down), and his shooting numbers back up this …

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