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    • Derrick Rose was Chicago’s dream athlete and he will not be forgotten
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    Derrick Rose was Chicago’s dream athlete and he will not be forgotten

    Madoc Meredith Posted on

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

    Not his goals or hopes – his MVP season was almost four years ago – but his real dreams during the dark days following his torn left anterior cruciate ligament in the first game of the 2012 playoffs and the subsequent tear of the meniscus in his right knee that robbed him of his 2013-14 season, the injuries that dramatically altered his Hall of Fame career.

    “I don’t have them anymore, but during my first injury I dreamed of being back on the pitch,” Rose told me. “With the second injury I didn’t have as many dreams, but with the first injury I had a lot.”

    In the dreams, he was playing basketball. Nothing too dramatic, he remembered. But then he woke up and “I had a brace on my knee.”

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    GO DEEPER

    Derrick Rose, former NBA MVP, retires after 16 seasons

    He could laugh about it now. He had cried long enough. And the whole city cried with him.

    We also dreamed about Derrick Rose. The whole city.

    Rose officially retired Thursday after a 16-year career that saw him rise to the top before slipping into mediocrity. He was an American success story and a cautionary tale in the sport. But make no mistake, he won. He can retire with peace of mind and a basketball legend to be proud of.

    A hometown star, a two-time state champion at Simeon Career Academy and the youngest MVP in league history, Rose was, quite simply, a comet from Englewood.

    The luck that had brought him here – a 1.7 percent lottery chance – quickly became clear. 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 see it, why can’t I be the MVP of the league? Why can’t I be the best player in the league?” We smiled at the bravery of a soft-spoken young man.

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

    “He might be able to tell you that,” Rose’s friend and teammate Joakim Noah said after the game. “But when he dribbles the ball down the field, he knows what he’s doing.”

    Rose was like Buddy Guy with a guitar with the ball in his hands, Devin Hester with a full-throttle shot, Dick Butkus if he could dunk. We didn’t know then that he would be more like Gale Sayers in his prime, but Rose was a perfect blend of improvisation, speed and power in a 6-foot-3 frame.

    Stacey King said 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 but flawed city.

    “It’s special that a little boy from Englewood was named MVP,” Rose said at his press conference after winning the award.

    After being named regular season MVP — and don’t let critics rewrite history, he absolutely deserved it — Rose led the Bulls to the Eastern Conference Finals, where LeBron James embodied all of that. Well, Rose was barely grown up. He had a long career ahead of him. The Bulls would come back. They would get to the Finals and win one, ending the long drought that followed the end of the Michael Jordan era.

    But that summer, when he was at the peak of his career, Rose said, he refused to make any appearances. He kept his trophy in his apartment near the Bulls’ practice facility and moped for weeks after the Heat knocked him out of the playoffs. He went to Los Angeles for training and was invited to late-night shows, but he turned them all down.

    “There’s no point in being there,” he told me one day. “At the end of every show, they’re going to ask you, ‘So what happened to the guy 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 was a great feeling.’ That’s how I want to be on the show.”

    In the following lockout-shortened season, the Bulls were once again the best team in the NBA. As a team, they looked better than the previous year and were ready 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 of the year and the dream was over, even if we didn’t know it yet.

    From a PR perspective, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a situation as poorly handled as Rose’s ill-fated “return” season. It was everyone’s fault and no one’s fault. Nature, 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 on edge. It was overwhelming. There’s no doubt now that too much was being heaped on.

    Rose meant something different to everyone and many people were interested in his success. The indecision that followed tarnished his reputation. Not everyone, I must add, but it destroyed something that could have been fixed with a great season. It wasn’t meant to be that way.

    His return ended with a 10-game cameo, another knee injury, and another missed season. His NBA life would never be the same again. Rose finally returned in the 2014-15 season, shaking off a minor injury during the season to score a dramatic buzzer-beater that gave the Bulls a lead in a playoff series against James. It didn’t last, however.

    Tom Thibodeau lost a power struggle and was fired. After one more season, Rose was traded to the Knicks. He spent the rest of his career as a roving worker, mostly for teams coached by Thibodeau. He occasionally played in an important game (he scored 50 points for the Timberwolves), but now he was a walking “what if?” story.

    In his first fall after leaving the Bulls, Rose had to defend himself in a civil suit alleging sexual harassment stemming from an alleged incident years earlier. In October of that year, I was in Los Angeles to attend the Cubs’ playoff series against the Dodgers and spent two afternoons in a downtown courthouse. I saw the testimony of both sides and saw the evidence against him. In the hallway, I spoke with his brother Reggie about the Triangle Offense and Rose’s future on the court. It was a strange juxtaposition of the private and public life of this fledgling basketball star.

    The charges obviously damaged Rose’s reputation, and his own words on the case certainly did not help him. In the end his friends were found not liable by a juryHe returned to basketball, but never again reached the heights he had achieved as a young man.

    In the years that followed, Rose was celebrated every time he returned to the United Center. He had some good games there, showing flashes of what was and what could be. In the end, he was a veteran, coming off the bench and making cameos like Brian Scalabrine. and yet he still got standing Os and “MVP” chants. His personal life had settled down. He has three children and is married. His social media posts show a still young man in search of knowledge. He accepted his reality and was just happy to be able to play, even if just a little.

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

    go deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Greenberg: Should the Bulls retire Derrick Rose’s jersey? Maybe they should trade him now

    From the sounds of it, it will happen soon, perhaps when Thibodeau and the Knicks come to town this January.

    “Derrick will always be part of the family and I look forward to having him and his children back at the United Center. We are sure to have an unforgettable celebration of his incredible journey,” Bulls President Michael Reinsdorf said in a statement.

    Unless that involves a jersey retirement, you can expect a “Ring of Honor” reaction from the crowd.

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

    Required reading

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

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    Madoc Meredith
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