The word that comes to mind, or rather the core of everything about Derrick Rose, is focus.

It takes an inordinate amount of concentration to even reach a professional level through a treacherous path, and even more steel to improve it.

For Rose, the Chicago-born-and-raised boy who quietly announced his retirement Thursday morning — while placing ads in the newspapers of the cities where he played — it’s more than just focus, because his career has been like that twisty, so fascinating and…, sometimes so damn confusing.

He will likely be the only Most Valuable Player in NBA history not to make it into the Naismith Hall of Fame, even if his sheer in-game imprint makes him a case. Hopefully the Bulls will retire his jersey, even though they have inexplicably relinquished the No. 1 pick a few times since he was traded to the New York Knicks in 2016.

This is important, but of limited importance, for Chicago – a city that is as hard on its own terms as it is warm toward the same numbers for which it has impossible expectations. You’d be hard-pressed to find a relationship between player and city as complicated, layered, and yet as valuable to the overall culture and feeling as Rose was married to Chicago.

Not even LeBron James — who grew up not in Cleveland but in Akron, about 35 minutes from downtown — scores as well as Rose in Chicago.

When he “made it,” not by being named MVP in 2011 or any other accolade he won during his all-too-brief prime, but by simply existing, Chicago rejoiced. Everything else was the icing on the cake.

For most.

Since Michael Jordan left the building in June 1998, the Bulls haven’t had much to cheer about, and Rose seemed to have 80 percent of it as a writer or co-writer. There was a time when one could question Rose’s 2011 MVP, but in hindsight any litigation seems a folly, and there have been others since then that have been worth a closer look.

Just like before he stepped onto the world basketball stage as a teenager, the narrative then and in 2011 was the same: You had to be there.

Rose wasn’t as insane as Russell Westbrook and perhaps wasn’t built to take punishment better than his basketball son, Ja Morant. He was not the first of his kind, but in his prime he was uniquely one of them.

The belief in Chicago’s son was so strong that it would be difficult to convince many that he alone could not defeat Miami’s holy trinity of James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh – at the peak of their powers.

And when he predictably couldn’t, the slings and arrows began to form a line. And when his body failed him, as it did with bigger, stronger men, more criticism came.

But it seems so long since Rose missed those years after that ACL injury on a Saturday afternoon in 2012 as the Bulls began their playoff march toward another showdown with the hated in the first game of their first-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers Heat began.

It’s a testament to Rose’s persistence and, yes, focus, that these memories seem like they belong to another shadowy figure rather than the elder statesman who traveled to other franchises and at times performed magic in other jerseys. It didn’t feel right that at the end of his second stint with the Knicks, the MVP was relegated to a supporting player or the man Knicks fans so coveted.

That stubborn nature, that quiet determination, allowed him to work through his body’s missteps and, of course, his own indiscretions, which landed him in the crosshairs of an ugly civil lawsuit in 2016, when he and his friends were accused of an alleged sexual assault.

He was found not to be liable, but the details changed his image forever in the minds of some or more. Believing in him became a greater task, although not impossible.

A man of few but mostly clear words, he did not always convey his message in the way many believed he should. In a way, he was a mirror of Chicago, showing all the ugliness and yet all the promise that many were unwilling to give up. Everything depended on him because not only was he fighting a hopeless battle against a relentless machine, but he also apparently didn’t care that the machine would always win.

Rose would continue as the NBA transformed from a league that seemed to fit his style to one that embraced a new way of playing. Considering the atrophy on his body – both from the harsh force of twisting it to work his way through small gaps on the NBA floor and the pre-existing damage he likely entered the league with after After navigating the highly competitive Chicago Stadium and AAU courts, Rose’s focus is unlikely to last long enough to last.

The difference between great players staying great and having the slightest decline seems to be a matter of focus. This is certainly the case with championship teams that no longer have the ability to stick around for extended periods, but can now and then produce a night or two that look like old glory.

He seemed to get it in 2015 when he and the Bulls had James’ Cavaliers on the ropes – a buzzer-beater Friday night in the East semifinals that once again had many believing Rose would rise again.

The pressure of a winner felt like nothing compared to shooting for money with frozen fingertips in his old Englewood neighborhood, so he could fall back on greatness when needed and capture the imagination once again.

But the old glory couldn’t be sustained, and it seemed like his career was coming to an end, like so many whose only basketball sin was having a body that couldn’t accommodate the engine of a Ferrari, like Grant Hill and Penny Hardaway.

Rose handled this for years, somehow always grabbing that glory, occasionally breaking from his stoic nature to unleash unexpected tears after triumphant nights, like his 50-point game as a Minnesota Timberwolf in the 2018-19 season.

That was a year after Rose temporarily sat out of the game after a brief stint with James’ Cavaliers, contemplating retirement after an ankle injury that was too reminiscent of previous ailments.

When Rose was a Knick, he disappeared from the franchise without explanation, missing a game and apologizing to the team when he returned.

He went to the brink but somehow managed to pick himself up, reinvent himself and carve out a new basketball life for himself, away from the expectations that traditionally follow stars. A sixth man was the suit he wore in his early 30s when he played (for the second time) in Minnesota, Detroit and New York.

The promises and the what-ifs were replaced by a mental resilience and a refusal to accept that his body could no longer function and that the NBA was no longer a place for him.

These moments seem so far away, almost as if he played three different careers before finally calling it quits, less than a week before his 36th birthday.

He’s stepping away to focus more on being a husband and father and getting more out of his basketball body than so many of us expected a decade ago.

Pledge to move toward perseverance through an unwavering focus.