Rose To Defend Skills Challenge Title

January 6th, 2010 by Andrew Wamboldt

According to Bulls.com, Derrick Rose will defend his Skills Challenge title that he won last year at Allstar Weekend.

Derrick Rose confirmed on Wednesday that he will take the court to defend his Taco Bell Skills Challenge title in Dallas next month during NBA All-Star weekend.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” said Rose from the Berto Center. “Last year, it was a great experience being there with my family. Just having the opportunity to be around the All-Stars; I can’t lie, it was fun. I appreciated that opportunity because it was so unbelievable.”

Last February, the Bulls guard became the first rookie to win the Skills Challenge when he defeated New Jersey’s Devin Harris in the championship round. Tony Parker and Mo Williams were the other participants. Past winners of the Skills Challenge include Deron Williams, Dwyane Wade (back-to-back) and Steve Nash.

Hopefully Rose puts forth more effort in this year’s contest than he did in last year’s. Winning is still impressive, but it seemed like Rose was just going through the motions last year, rather than aggressively going out there trying to win. Hopefully he brings his new aggressive passion that he has shown recently during games to the Skills Challenge, and just blows everyone out of the water, because he has the speed to do just that.