Now it's over. Now, it finally begins.
In two weeks, the real, real return of Derrick Rose begins. Inside the new facilities, inside a Chicago Bulls (not Team USA) practice jersey wearing the No. 1 instead of Nos. 41 or 6, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans where his jump shot falls. Not fails.
He gave himself an A, when asked how would he grade his overall performance during the FIBA Basketball World Cup. Despite the suspect assist-to-turnover ratio, the anemic outside shooting, the visible problems he had finishing, and the fact that once he lost his starting spot to Kyrie Irving he never got it back, Rose still personally won.
That's why Rose is looking at this whole experience differently than everyone else. He has no other choice.
"I'm going to transfer this on to next season with the Bulls," Rose said Sunday. "It's really helped me with my recovery. Being off the floor, taking care of my body, eating right. I was feeling good every time I stepped on the floor, stretching every time; I think it's going to help me with the Bulls season."
If we want to read deep into Rose's comments, a conclusion could easily be drawn that once he made the team he took his foot off the gas. Saving himself for the long haul, for when he's really going to be needed, for his legacy.
There's a ridiculously optimistic Tao Te Ching-ish view from D-Rose's World Cup experience. He wasn't carried off and didn't limp off the court in any game, at any time. And in the 15-step process that we are about to go through before the back-to-being-his-full-self D-Rose actually returns, that was his Step 1.
Understand, we've been through this with him before, but he's the one who has had to live through it and live with it. There is no "outside looking in" for Rose. Everything is coming from the inside. So while we watch from afar and critique his summer, he's living with getting over a recent path that had to have him wondering if he was about to be Chicago's basketball version of Gale Sayers.
And more than anything, that has to be the takeaway: Rose has thus far survived. And now that he knows he's survived these past six weeks of playing catch-up to players who have gotten two years better since the last time he played against them, his mind is right to finally take Step 2.
It's a step he hasn't been able to take, honestly, since he injured his toe in Week 3 of the 2011-12 season, when it all began to fall apart.
In the latter stages of building the Team USA squad, when Rose was the talk of the team and U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski was saying Rose was basically back to being elite, Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau told ESPN Radio's Colin Cowherd: "I think [this] is ideal for him, to be honest with you, in this particular case. It's good for Derrick. It's been great for him, actually."
That proved oddly true even as it's been a part of the process that too many on the outside seem to want to rush. In this desperate hope for the Return of Pooh, the process should not be rushed. As long as Thibs and Derrick (and Derrick's brother Reggie) don't rush this return to greatness, then greatness has a strong chance for a return.
There were glimpses during FIBA play. We all have to admit that much. And that's what we'll hold on to, what Rose himself will build off. But now that it's over, those glimpses have to morph into the norm. The minute he steps through the doors of the Advocate Center for the preseason-opening practice with the Bulls on Sept. 29, Rose must focus on being unstoppable instead of fitting in, finding his rhythm and wondering whether his body can withstand a return to the NBA.
This World Cup just proved (to him, maybe not everyone else) that it can. And that's 99 percent of what counts. The other 1 percent is in the hands of someone else.
From this point on, the biggest problem Rose (hopefully) should have to face is how he's going to adjust to coming back to a team that is no longer his. During Rose's absence on the court, Joakim Noah has become the heart, soul and spirit of how the Bulls roll. And even though Noah has consistently made it clear that the team is still Derrick's, unless Noah changes who he is, it's going to be hard for that dynamic to re-establish itself in Rose's favor.
But that's what training camp, preseason and the next eight months are for. And if there have been no physical setbacks by the time the playoffs start, then we'll all be able to look back at this summer -- despite how far he is from being the player who interrupted LeBron James' MVP four-peat -- as the best thing that's happened to Derrick Rose in a very long time.