CHICAGO -- At a downtown shoe store Saturday, Derrick Rose held his newest signature shoe, the D Rose 5 Boost, up for the cameras.

This season, he plans on wearing it, too.

After playing 10 games over the previous two seasons thanks to two different knee injuries, the Chicago Bulls star is raring to go for his second comeback season. Third, if you count the season he wound up missing.

No need to hype this "Return."

The Bulls finished a 4-4 preseason with a loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday in St. Louis. They are set to open Wednesday against the Knicks in New York, then to return to Chicago for a much-awaited home opener against LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers.

While the Bulls lost their final two preseason games, Rose was better than ever, scoring 57 points on 58.5 percent shooting, hitting 7 of his 12 3-point tries.

Rose was on a minutes watch for most of the eight-game preseason slate and didn’t crack the 22-minute mark until the sixth game. In his final three games, he averaged just under 25 points in 28 minutes per. His speed is definitely still there, and his skill at getting to the rim seems intact. Even his jumper, which was missing during the FIBA Basketball World Cup in Spain, looked steady.

“I think the whole preseason I’ve been switching up my gears,” he said. “I haven’t been playing at one pace the entire time. You see little bursts of speed here and there. You don’t get a steady diet of it. I’ve been trying to use little things in my offensive game, floaters, using the backboard on my floaters, hitting my jump shots. Just using little things to keep them off balance.”

Rose started his Saturday at an event at the Adidas store in Water Tower Place for kids from After School Matters, a charity that supports after-school activities for Chicago teenagers. Rose donated $1 million to it this fall. He spoke to 20 kids, sharing life lessons and taking questions for almost an hour.

Then he trekked to a Foot Locker store, where fans camped out to meet Rose and get his newest shoes. The first 50 got to meet him.

Three years ago, he released his first signature shoe at this store during the NBA lockout. Back then, he was the defending MVP.

The next two years saw massive, glitzy Adidas events, including the now-derided hype campaign for "The Return" in 2012. The hype was toned down a bit this time around, and the result was a more organic, natural feel. That's Rose's appeal. He's a local kid made good.

“You come out here and you got people standing outside wearing your stuff, it kind of freaks you out a little bit,” Rose said.

There was a host of Adidas employees in town for the event, and, like Bulls employees, all are hopeful that Rose is finally healthy. It's tough to sell the signature shoe of a player in a suit and tie. His shoes are selling quite well overseas, and as the line snaking around Foot Locker showed, fans in Chicago still believe in him.

As for the rest of the basketball world, after two missed years, and three lost postseasons, no one is quite sure where Rose, now 26, stands in the NBA firmament.

One recent example: Rose was ranked No. 28 in ESPN.com’s collaborative TrueHoop rankings, or one spot lower than Suns guard Goran Dragic, the victim in a classic Rose dunk from yesteryear.

“I mean, I hear about the rankings here and there,” Rose said. “But I know where I am with my game. I know I’m not a top-30 player, I know I’m much higher. But everyone has their own opinions, so I can’t get mad.”