Derrick Rose is a Different Player When he’s Rested

Last season was something of a victory for Derrick Rose. His team was inconsistent, they flamed out in the playoffs, and began their offseason by firing Tom Thibodeau. But Rose appeared in 51 regular season games, more than the previous three seasons combined. He played 30 minutes per game and, on certain nights, looked a lot like the dominant force he had been before injuries began piling up. As you might expect for a player who’s struggled to get healthy for as long as he has, and missed as many games as he’s missed, rest had a lot to do with which nights he looked like his old self.

For an examination of player performance at the single-game level, Kevin Ferrigan’s DRE is a handy metric. DRE connects single game box score statistics to RAPM, creating a per 100 possession estimate of a player’s total impact. It can also be calculated across a stretch of games or an entire season. DRE was not fond of Rose last year, rating him at -2.35 for the season (0.00 represents an average level of performance). But looking at how his DRE changed based on how many days of rest he had before each game reveals a fairly wide spread.

The difference between Rose on no rest and Rose on two days of rest was 2.01 points per 100 possessions, an enormous difference in performance. On no rest, his DRE -3.45, far worse than any other player in the league who played at least 750 minutes with one team. On two days of rest, he came in at -1.46, about the same as Andrew Wiggins. Again, DRE is just one way of estimating player performance but the difference here is startling. At the team level, an margin of 2.01 points per 100 possessions works out to between five and six extra wins over the course of an 82-game season.

Thibodeau had a reputation for overworking his players and minute totals for players like Rose and Joakim Noah were a point of constant friction between coach and front office. Unsurprisingly, the Bulls as a group were extremely sensitive to rest. They were outscored by 3.2 points per 100 possessions on back-to-backs, about the same as the Brooklyn Nets’ scoring margin last season. One two days of rest, they outscored opponents by 9.7 points per 100 possessions, a margin that would have ranked second in the league behind the Golden State Warriors across the entire season. So at team level, two days of rest was worth about 13 points per 100 possessions in net performance.

One would imagine that managing minutes is something Chicago’s front office has talked about at length with new head coach Fred Hoiberg. Rose’s case presents an interesting scenario. Usually the strategy of sitting players out on back-to-backs is seen as a sacrifice to preserve health and future performance. Rose was so bad without rest last season that (if the pattern holds) keeping him out of back-to-backs probably pays off in two different ways–improving the team’s chances in those back-to-back games and keeping him fresher and more productive for the rest of their schedule.