Last weekend saw Derrick Rose Night, as the Chicago Bulls officially retired his #1 jersey and raised it up into the rafters of the United Center. Rose becomes just the fifth Bulls player to earn this honor.
“I think it’s awesome,” said Northwestern head coach Chris Collins, who coached the 2010-11 NBA MVP in 2010 on the Team USA World Championship side.
“I got the chance to spend a lot of time with him that summer, got to really know him, what an awesome guy- just wanted to be one of the guys, wanted to be a good teammate,” Collins said on Sunday, after his team fell 78-68 to #16 Michigan State at home.
Taj Gibson, the man who played more games with Derrick Rose than anyone else in the stellar point guard’s career, gave a tremendous account of the evening’s festivities to RG. The Bulls, who are still in last place in the Central Division, were somehow someway inspired enough to get a win on Derrick Rose Night, beating a much better New York Knicks team 139-126 that evening.
“Wish I could have gotten there,” Collins continued.
“Our trainer, Jeff Tanaka was the trainer on that (Bulls) team, so he didn’t come with with us to Purdue (last weekend), so that he could be there for Derrick, and that was the kind of relationship that they had.
“He was able to be there, and it looked awesome. So happy that his jersey will go into the rafters, he’s a really special guy.”
Singer-songwriter Bret Michaels (the front man for glam rock/hair band legends Poison) famously told us “every rose has its thorn.” The thorn with Derrick Rose is and always was his horrific personal injury history.
While he scored over 12,000 points in the NBA and made three All-Star games, we’ll always have to wonder, just what might have been, had he stayed healthy.
The Chicago native and Simeon graduate led the Bulls to the Eastern Conference Finals (they haven’t been back since) in 2010-2011, his second season in the league.
They looked set for another deep postseason run in 2011-12, until disaster struck.
“I remember the game he got hurt (torn ACL), still heartbroken,” said Collins, “It against my dad (Doug Collins, who also coached the Bulls for a long time), my dad was coaching Philly, in game one (of the first round of the NBA Playoffs), the Bulls had the best record in the league.”
The Bulls lost that series, as the #1 seed to the #8 seed Philadelphia 76ers.
That game and series sent them on a downward spiral as a franchise. They have only won one playoff series since then.
As for Derrick Rose, his left knee required surgery and he missed the entire 2012–13 season. He returned to play in 2013–14, but just a weeks in, he injured his right meniscus, causing him to miss the remainder of the season of that season.
He returned once again in 2014-15, but by this time, his two serious knee injuries had severely impacted both his availability and his production.
Although he continued his NBA career all the way up until last year, he was just never the same player.
He suffered a lot of hardship in the court, but through it all, maintained a great attitude, and was nearly universally beloved.
Collins mentioned that he is close to Luol Deng and Carlos Boozer, two guys who played with Derrick Rose in Chicago for a very long time.
“My Duke guys were on those teams,” the Coach Mike Krzyzewski mentee said. “And all they did was rave about derrick as a teammate
“It was cool to see him come to Chicago as a local hero, and the way he represented himself to win MVP.”
Editor’s Note: if you Google the author of this article, one of the first thing that comes up is his IMDB page, which consists of one whole credit: “Pooh: the Derrick Rose Story,” so he’ll always be partial to Derrick Rose.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America and RG. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter.