For those of you who don’t watch “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, I highly recommend it.  For those of you that do, bear with me while I explain the D.E.N.N.I.S. system.  In a recent episode of Always Sunny, Dennis explained his “foolproof system for getting any chick’s undying love”.  Here are the basic steps of his hilarious system:

Demonstrate value
Engage physically
Nurture dependence
Neglect emotionally
Inspire hope
Separate entirely

The basic premise of the system, as you can tell, is that you con women into sleeping with you, toy with their heads for a bit, and then drop them like hot potatoes.  So the question now becomes, is Derrick Rose DENNISing the Bulls?  After looking at each step, I’m becoming a bit concerned.  Let’s break it down:

Demonstrate value: It is pretty clear that Rose did this in college.  At Memphis he was so explosive and dominant, he led the Tigers to the National Championship game and seduced the Bulls into selecting him.

Engage physically: The Bulls drafted Rose and and he made sweet love to them all season long to the tune of 16.8 points, 6.3 assists, and 3.9 rebounds per game.  He also won a Rookie of the Year award.

Nurture dependence: Those first couple steps?  Those are obvious and could go either way, but this is where the DENNISing becomes a little more real.  Rose made us NEED him after the 1st round series with Boston.  He exploded on the national scene and helped carry us to a Game 7 against the defending champs.  We let Gordon walk thinking that Rose could carry this team to the promised land without BG.  Now we need him and have to depend on him every game to carry us.

Neglect emotionally: This is where we are at right now.  Just when we have become dependent on him, he “pulls back” (Dennis’s own words to explain this step).  Think about it.  All his averages drop across the board and he is clearly holding back the aggressive style of play that caused us to engage physically and become dependent.

Inspire hope: This is the next step.  It hasn’t happened yet, but keep your eyes open for it.  With Dennis, he stood outside the woman’s window proclaiming his love and banging her one last time.  Will Rose make love to us again and inspire hope?

Separate entirely: After the last glorious bang, Dennis slinks out the window, never to be seen again.  It’s still a long way off for Rose, but he becomes a free agent in the summer of 2013.  Will he leave and never look back?  There’s no way to know yet, but it is a possibility.

That analysis does nothing to answer the question of whether the Bulls are being DENNISed or not, but it does raise some disturbing issues about where this relationship is going.