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Derrick Rose was Chicago's dream athlete and he won't be forgotten

26 September 2024Last Update :
Derrick Rose was Chicago's dream athlete and he won't be forgotten

Ten years ago, I was sitting with Derrick Rose at a promotional event downtown and I asked him about his dreams.

Not his goals or aspirations — we were nearly four years past his MVP season — but his actual dreams during the dark days that followed his left ACL tear in the first game of the 2012 playoffs and the subsequent right knee meniscus tear that robbed him of his 2013-14 season, the injuries that dramatically altered a Hall of Fame career.

“I don’t have them anymore, but I did have dreams about being back out there during my first injury,” Rose told me. “The second injury I didn’t have that many, but the first injury I had a lot of dreams.”

The dreams were about him playing basketball. Nothing too dramatic, he remembered. But then he would wake up and “I had a brace on my knee.”

By this point, he could laugh about it. He had cried long enough. And the whole city cried with him.

We too had dreams about Derrick Rose. The whole city did.

Rose officially retired Thursday after a 16-year career that saw him ascend to the top before falling to the middle. He was an American success story and a sports cautionary tale. But make no mistake, he won. He can retire with peace of mind and a basketball legacy of which he can be proud.

Rose was a hometown star, a two-time state champion at Simeon Career Academy who became the youngest MVP in league history. He was quite simply, a comet out of Englewood.

The luck that brought him here — a 1.7 percent chance in the lottery — was quickly realized. Rose was the rookie of the year and his performance against the Celtics in a seven-game, first-round series in 2009 was nothing short of a coming-out party. The next year, he was an All-Star and at media day before the 2010-11 season, he said, ”The way I look at it, why can’t I be the MVP in the league? Why can’t I be the best player in the league?” We smiled at the bravado from a soft-spoken young man.

Not long after that, before an early season game against the Lakers, Rose told a few of us he didn’t consider himself a star. Then he went out and led the Bulls to an eye-opening win.

“He might tell you guys that,” Rose’s friend and teammate Joakim Noah said after the game. “But when he’s dribbling that ball up the court, he knows what he’s doing.”

Rose with the ball in his hand was like Buddy Guy with a guitar, Devin Hester with a head of steam. Dick Butkus if he could dunk. Back then, we didn’t know his peak would be more like that of Gale Sayers, but Rose was a perfect mix of improvisation, speed and power rolled into one 6-foot-3 body.

As Stacey King opined, he was “too big, too strong, too fast and too good.”

He was more than a basketball player. He was the hope of Chicago, a wonderful, flawed city.

“It’s special that a little kid from Englewood won MVP,” Rose said at his news conference after winning the award.

After earning the regular-season MVP — and don’t let critics rewrite history, he absolutely deserved it — Rose led the Bulls to the Eastern Conference finals, where it was LeBron James who was all those things. Ah well, Rose was barely an adult. He had a long career ahead of him. The Bulls would be back. They would make a Finals and win one, breaking the long drought after the Michael Jordan era ended.

But that summer, when he was on top of the world, Rose told me he refused to do any appearances. He kept his trophy in his condo near the Bulls practice facility and moped for weeks after the Heat knocked him out of the playoffs. He went to train in Los Angeles and was invited on the late-night shows, but he turned them all down.

“Ain’t no point in being on there,” he told me one day. “At the end of every show they’re going to ask you, ‘So, what happened with whoever you lost to?’ There’s no point. I want to be on the show where they say, ‘How did it feel to win a championship?’ ‘It felt great.’ That’s how I want to be on the show.”

The Bulls were again the best team in the NBA during the lockout-shortened season that followed. As a team, they looked better than they did the previous year and primed for a rematch with James and the Heat.

And then it all fell apart. Rose tore his ACL at the end of his first playoff game that year and the dream was dead, even if we didn’t know it yet.

From a public relations standpoint, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a situation as mishandled as Rose’s ill-fated “return” season. It was everyone’s fault and no one’s fault. Nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum, and a basketball season without Rose felt like a crime against humanity. It seemed like too many people were angry, nervous and antsy. It was overwhelming. There is no question, now, that too much was put on his shoulders.

Rose meant something different to everyone, and a lot of people were invested in his success. The ensuing indecision darkened his reputation. Not among everyone, I should add, but it did damage what could have been repaired with a great season. It wasn’t meant to be.

His return ended up as a 10-game cameo, another knee injury and another missing season. His NBA life would never be the same. Rose came back for good in the 2014-15 season and he shook off a minor, in-season injury and hit a dramatic buzzer-beater to give the Bulls a lead in a playoff series against James. It didn’t last.

Tom Thibodeau lost a power struggle and got fired and after one more season. Rose was traded to the Knicks. He spent the rest of his career as a journeyman, mostly for Thibodeau-coached teams. Occasionally, he’d go off for a big game (scoring 50 for the Timberwolves), but he was now a walking “What if?” story.

In his first fall after leaving the Bulls, Rose had to defend himself in a civil trial about a sexual assault charge from an alleged incident years before. That October, I found myself in Los Angeles for the Cubs’ playoff series against the Dodgers and I spent two afternoons at a downtown courthouse. I watched testimony from both sides and saw evidence entered against him. In the hallway, I talked to his brother, Reggie, about the triangle offense and Rose’s future on the court. It was a strange juxtaposition of this still-young basketball star’s personal and public life.

The charges, of course, adversely affected Rose’s reputation, and his own words about the case certainly didn’t help. In the end, he and his friends were found not liable by a jury. He went back to basketball, but he never again reached the heights he touched as a young man.

In the years that followed, Rose was celebrated appropriately whenever he returned to the United Center. He had some good games there. He showed flashes of what once was and what still could be. By the end, he was an old head coming off the bench for Brian Scalabrine-like cameos and yet, he was still getting standing Os and “MVP” chants. His personal life had settled down. He has three kids and got married. His social media posts show a still-young man in search of knowledge. He was accepting of his reality and just happy to be able to play, even if just a little.

For years, we’ve debated if Rose should get his jersey retired by the Bulls when he hung up his shoes. The answer is yes. What he meant to Chicago is more important than what he didn’t, or couldn’t, do for the Bulls after the injuries. No one should wear the No. 1 jersey for the Bulls. The number is his, forever.

From what it sounds like, it’ll happen soon, maybe when Thibodeau and the Knicks come to town this January.

“Derrick will always be family, and I look forward to having him and his kids back at the United Center for what’s sure to be an unforgettable celebration of his incredible journey,” Bulls president Michael Reinsdorf said in a statement.

If that doesn’t include a jersey retirement, expect a “ring of honor” reaction from the crowd.

I’ve been covering sports in Chicago for more than 20 years and of all the athletes I’ve covered, no one owned their moment like Derrick Rose. No season was more fun to cover than his MVP year. I’ve written more words on him than any athlete. It’s a shame his reign didn’t last longer, but that it happened at all was special and it’s something that Chicago will never forget.

(Photo of Derrick Rose holding his NBA MVP trophy in 2011: Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)

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