Derrick Rose’s voice was low and he sounded tired. He hesitated at telling his story. How ill he got. How it hit his family too.
“I’m mad I even gotta talk about it,” he said, “because of how it made me feel. It sucks. It sucks.”
This month, Rose became one of the 29,652,483 people in America to contract COVID-19. On Tuesday, March 2, he was in San Antonio with the Knicks but a test returned inconclusive and he could not play. The next day, after testing negative, he flew back with the Knicks. That Thursday, his saga began.
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For nearly two weeks, Rose quarantined at his home, waiting out the illness. He had his family with him and that was a saving grace, he says. But they were also sick. His kids had runny noses, fevers, and a cough. Their mom caught it and her mom too.
Rose suffered from headaches. His body grew sore. He knew the COVID-19 symptoms and he says he felt them all.
“It was completely different,” he said. “They say everybody is different but with me, I never felt anything like that before. I had the flu; it was nothing like the flu in my sense. The flu, your stomach, you’re drained and everything – it was that times 10. I’m slowly getting back.”
Monday, he returned to practice with the Knicks, 22 days after he last played a game for them. He spoke about his experience with the virus, the trouble that it caused him. And he talked about his return to the court.
It was a strange, kind of dissonant type of conversation. But that happens when a league plays a season in the middle of a pandemic. The reality that business does not stop even amidst a national crisis. These are humans fighting through an illness, triaging their lives one day at a time. And they are basketball players missing games in the middle of a playoff push. All an unseemly balancing act. Rose has not played since Feb. 28, a time period in which 1,161,172 more people have tested positive for COVID-19 and the Knicks have played eight more games.
“We know how serious it is,” Tom Thibodeau said. “And we try to take every precaution. I think it’s impacted everyone. Everyone knows someone who’s had it. Your heart goes out to everyone who’s had it or who’s had a family member who’s had it. But you are concerned about all of those elements. Obviously, when you go into quarantine, that’s not an easy thing to deal with either. So it’s very serious.”
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It was for Rose.
He first had an inconclusive test on March 2, which forced him to miss the Knicks’ game in San Antonio, because of the NBA’s health and safety protocols. He flew back with the team the next day after testing negative. But, he says, he started testing positive the next day when he was back in New York.
Rose quarantined for the next 10 days, taking more tests and medicine. He felt the symptoms and they hit him hard, as they did his family. He could not leave his home. He could not exercise. He spent his days reading and getting texts from members of the organization. The virus, no longer just an abstraction, was in full effect.
“It’s real,” Rose said. “The COVID thing — I know a lot of people overlook it — but it’s very serious. It’s real.”
Now, Rose must transition to the next phase of his recovery, a return to the Knicks. This NBA season has built-in little lag time between one phase and the next. Every ill patient is also a DNP. As soon as the symptoms wear off long enough to be cleared of the virus, the process to return to the court begins.
Rose started working out again after 10 days. He must build up his conditioning back to a level that lets him compete on an NBA court. Thibodeau says he will play again once he gets to that stage.
The Knicks have missed him during his absence. They went 3-5 without him. Rose maligned the timing; he was just getting into a rhythm after an early Feb. trade from the Pistons. He’ll have to work to retain it, to build himself back into the person he was before COVID-19 struck.
“I couldn’t do anything but just be around the family and read so coming back just even leaving the house that’s something that we take for granted,” he said. “Or just breathing. Just everything. I went through a lot during this quarantine. I’m just thankful. Very thankful.”
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
