Derrick Rose should be fine. Time will tell if the Chicago Bulls will be, too.
The NBA's MVP went through a full practice Tuesday, one day after twisting his left ankle in the closing seconds of a 103-95 loss to the Atlanta Hawks in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. Rose expects to be ready for Game 2 today.
"It's fine, it's fine," he said at his MVP news conference in Lincolnshire, Ill., a few miles from the team's practice facility. "Actually, the medicine that they gave me was great. I woke up this morning feeling great, went to practice, worked out afterward."
Coach Tom Thibodeau said his star point guard "didn't have any swelling."
Rose officially became the NBA's youngest MVP and joined Michael Jordan as the only Bulls player to win the award, which was no surprise given his spectacular season and Chicago's leap to a league-leading 62 wins.
He has a ways to go before he catches Jordan, who won five MVPs and led the way to two championship three-peats, but he sure is off to a good start.
"I'm not even touching that man right there," Rose said. "I'm far away from him. If anything, it would be great to be close to him. This is a different team, a different era."
Rose, 22, got 1,182 points and 113 first-place votes from a panel of media voters, supplanting Wes Unseld as the youngest to win the award with a runaway win. Orlando's Dwight Howard (643 points) finished second and Miami's LeBron James was third.
He averaged 25 points and 7.7 assists while leading Chicago into contention for its first championship since the Jordan-Scottie Pippen era. For all the groaning over the Bulls missing out on James in free agency, they did quite well for themselves anyway.
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