Who's searching for Derrick Rose?

In a previous post we analyzed the trend and seasonality in Google searches for Kobe Bryant. We then looked at the evolution of Lebron James' queries. But what about another famously injured player whose return is eagerly awaited?

Here's the raw data from Google Trends for Derrick Rose, the 2011 MVP:



Using the same decomposition analysis detailed in the Kobe Bryant post, we get the following results:

What can be said from the decomposition?

Although he started playing or the Chicago Bulls in 2008, his popularity only increased (rather significantly) during the 2010 offseason. Since then his popularity has maintained high levels.

The seasonality is harder to rely on given the small number of seasons he has played, but we do again see the offseason/regular season/Playoffs effect, but unlike Kobe and Lebron that usually reach the later stages of the Playoffs, Derrick's peaks are in April/May for the beginning of the Playoffs only. Could Google search peaks be a criteria for distinguishing the future stars from the current stars?

As far as outliers are concerned, the main one is at the end of the regular season in 2011, and guess who won the MVP at that time? Despite his popularity, he was still not in the same league as the Kobes and Lebrons, so this MVP title did have many people searching to learn more about him.

One surprising element is the absence of a big residual peak the following year when he injured himself at the beginning of the Playoffs. I guess a lot of the additional queries were picked up by the Playoff seasonality thus explaining the absence of a bigger outlier in April 2012. We are seeing a big dip in queries right now simply because this is the beginning of the Playoffs and he has yet to return to the Bulls' lineup...