There it is. That is the news.
This article is not going to be politically correct. This is me, this is the fan of basketball, the Bulls, and Derrick Rose.
On Draft Night in 2008, the Chicago Bulls had a choice. They either go with the 6'10" forward from Kansas State who was posting double-doubles left and right, or do the Chicago Bulls select this athletic guard from Memphis who happens to be from the streets of Chicago.
The Bulls won the lottery and got the first overall pick in what seemed like a mathematically impossible situation. And with that first pick of the 2008 NBA Draft, then NBA commish David Stern said, "... with the first pick of the 2008 NBA Draft, the Chicago Bulls select....," now I must admit at this point, I was hoping for Michael Beasley, "Derrick Rose from the University of Memphis."
So, as it turned out the hometown kid could now be the driving force behind the revitalization behind a storied franchise that dominated the 90's with the help of guys named Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. The hometown kid can be the hometown hero. Almost too good to be true.
After an impressive rookie season, I remember thinking to my then 12-year-old self, "this dude is really... REALLY good." Turns out, I was on the right track with that opinion. In Rose's first NBA Playoff game, he took the seventh seeded Chicago Bulls into the TD Garden in Boston to face the second seeded Celtics in Round One. I had little hope for the Bulls to even win a single game in that series. Shame on me though; the series ended up being one of the best of all-time. And within this great series was the beginning of a superstar's take off.
In game one, Derrick Rose exploded for 36 points, tying Kareem's record for a playoff debut, and dishing out 11 assists. If you had not heard of him by then, you did after that game. The Bulls ended up losing the series in seven games, but that does not matter. What mattered most was that for once I felt like the Chicago Bulls were going somewhere. That feeling was because of a rookie.
Flash forward to the following year, he puts on one of the biggest posters I have ever seen a point guard pull out during a game. Rose dunked on Goran Dragic so bad that it spring-boarded Dragic's career.
All of the highlight drives to the hoop, going coast-to-coast and slamming it home, all of it seemed unreal for a point guard to do such beautiful things with a basketball. Derrick Rose showed a unique skill set that involved freakish athleticism, vision, scoring, and pure ruthlessness while driving to the hoop that nobody had seen before.
Before it was all said and done, Rose became an All-Star his second year in the league and had the Bulls back in the Playoffs.
Prior to Rose's third NBA season, Derrick played a role in Team USA's summer dominance by capturing Gold. Little did anybody know this would legitimize Derrick Rose as a top five player in the association.
Nobody could have believed him when he said prior to the season even starting that he could and would be the league's Most Valuable Player. I know I sure as hell would have never believed such a thing.
Derrick Rose went on to post incredible numbers at such a young age. Posting a line of 25/4/8 at the point guard position and leading Chicago, who was 82-82 the previous two seasons, to the league's best record was simply astonishing.
Derrick Rose would be named the youngest NBA MVP, in the history of the game. Not Jordan, LeBron, Bird, Magic, Kobe, Wilt, and no longer Wes Unseld.
Then, just like that, everything went south for a player that was on top of the basketball world in such a short time span.
When names like Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill, Brandon Roy, and Tracy McGrady just to name a few recent ones, get brought up, nobody wants to be a part of that club. The four most recent big "What If" players.
A torn ACL in the right knee, the comeback, tears his meniscus in the left knee, comes back again after two seasons missed.
After all of the injuries and hardships, Derrick rejoined Team USA in the summer of 2014. During the summer Rose would start to show flashes of what used-to-be. Then, the start of the 2014-2015 NBA season, he would return to the Chicago Bulls with a renewed sense of energy and happiness. All season long critics would say, "he is not the same guy... he cannot do it anymore... he is soft," maybe those critics were right.
Or maybe, just maybe, they were wrong. Dead wrong.
Rose would go on to have such a whirlwind of a season. There was still this part of me that kept saying, "yeah, okay. He's still got it dammit." And slowly but surely, Derrick Rose was rising.
They say "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." In this case, I was starting to believe it.
Hell, go back to the twelfth this month.
Leading up to one of the biggest games the Chicago Bulls had played all season long, I had a good feeling about the team heading into the All-Star break. Chicago faced off against Cleveland. It was Rose and Irving running the point for their respective teams. Must see basketball.
For the first time in three years, I actually sat back and thought "holy shit, this is the game. This was the game that is going to define Derrick's Comeback and possibly his career." I thought I had finally seen it.
So I thought anyway...
Then, against the Milwaukee Bucks, everything changed.
It happened again. A torn meniscus in the right knee this time.
The most sickening thought behind all of this is that he is a good guy. He cares about the city of Chicago, he cares about basketball, he distances himself from anything negative. While there are other athletes out there who are doing the opposite and are still able to preform at the highest level.
I will halt myself from jumping the gun, but I cannot see the hope anymore in Chicago. Derrick Rose may go down as the biggest "What If" in basketball in the last 20 years.
But, yes there is a but, the cool thing about sports is, the comeback stories. Let's just hope this is the greatest one yet.
TJ -- great article
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