Derrick Rose retires.
The youngest MVP in basketball history called it a career on Thursday, after sixteen seasons.
It is more-or-less instinctual, isn’t it? When an athlete retires, as Derrick Rose did on Thursday, to immediately try and encapsulate their career without any proper borders.
The highs-and-the-lows. Brilliance, resilience, frustration, all of it, all at once.
Though for Rose, it pretty aptly fits.
For what seemed the briefest of moments, if you were there, well, you’ll never forgot it: a shooting star with no true equal.
He grew up playing basketball in Englewood, which was, by his own admission, a difficult neighbourhood on Chicago’s South Side - but his talent was unmistakable. It took him to Memphis, where his sole season of NCAA ball, while later marred with controversy, saw him recognized as one of the best college players in the country.
It was almost too good to be true.
Rose, drafted by his hometown Chicago Bulls first overall in 2008, would immediately get to work on establishing himself as one of the most electric players in The Association. Pairing his traditional guard profile, vision and terrific ball-handling skill, with a seemingly boundless energy, raw power and an incomparable athleticism.
While the Bulls hadn’t been totally lost in their post, Last Dance Era, they were still looking to take that next, true step forward. And with Rose at the forefront, they kicked the door down.
The 2009 Rookie of the Year, an All-Star for three of his first four years and the author of perhaps one of the most memorable individual seasons in recent memory.
After all, what is an athlete but the measure of their impact? Of the dreams they inspired? The emotion left behind?
While LeBron James, on the immediate heels of The Decision, was one of the biggest villains in American sports, Rose’s on-court game brought forth a fresh perspective. Catapulting him not only onto the national stage but into basketball immortality as well.
He was just 22 that season, 2010/2011, when he became and remains (as of this writing) the youngest MVP in NBA history. That year, just his third as a professional as he led the Bulls to League-best 62 wins.
And sure, he didn’t win a scoring title, there were holes in his game and his defense wasn’t anything to write home about, not really. The Bulls couldn’t translate their regular season success into a championship either, bowing out in the Conference Finals, four-games-to-one, up against those freshly minted Heatles of the James-led Miami Heat.
But to lose yourself in those specific benchmarks? While they are important yes, the NBA, as a league, more so than the others in the North American circuit, it thrives on star power.
And so, here was Rose.
A star not just on the rise but the hometown kid, carving out a new legacy on the very same court Michael Jordan made famous..
Former Bulls player and later commentator, Stacey King, in his oft-used descriptor for Rose during his peak? He probably captured it best.
You may still hear it, ever-succinct, ringing in your ears:
“Too big, too fast, too strong, too good!”
It wouldn’t last, however.
Rose would only play 39 games the following season and then, during the opening of the 2012 playoffs, he would tear his left ALC in the Bulls contest against Philadelphia.
All-in-all, in the three years following his MVP-winning season, Rose, missing the entirety of 2012/2013, would play in just 49 games.
It became the arc that defined the rest of his career, one plagued by injuries and missed time. Numerous meniscus tears, compounded with continuous knee trouble, the same player, he never was again.
Traded to the New York Knicks in 2016, the back-half of Rose’s career, while a “what-if” case of the highest order also saw him embrace a rare evolution, as he became something of a journeyman. Starting only the odd game, as he came off the bench and three-times, he was a top-ten finisher for the Sixth Man of the Year Award. As he went from New York, Cleveland to Minnesota, to Detroit, New York once more and then, in that most recent, final, abbreviated season, Memphis.
Though his trademark flair was never quite gone for good either, despite it all.
Consider, Halloween, 2018, with Rose putting-up a career-high of 50 points against Utah. His pure skill, brought to the forefront once more, a momentary reclaiming of the torch he once carried as basketball’s next man up.
But there is another, darker side to the Rose-centric discourse.
In 2016, Rose was found not liable after he was accused of gang-rape in a civil suit, alongside two other men. And while the final legal decision is one thing yes, as Kavitha A. Davidson, writing for ESPN, put it at the time, such cases, as they involve high-profile athletes and frequently, a more distorted public perception?
They exist in a grey area that too often, it seems, sports fans, even news outlets and commentators at large (in the wake of Roses’ retirement, in this case), are more than willing to wave away (Rose, as the deposition from the suit revealed, did not understand the definition of consent - the Jane Doe in the suit said she was unconscious at the time).
If anything, it is a stark reminder that putting anyone, from athletes to celebrities on too-high a pedestal, it can be a fool’s errand. Trying to draw clean lines of separation between the player on the court and the person off it, well, it is to exist in a state of purposeful ignorance.
And Derrick Rose is not and shouldn’t be, by virtue of his professional success, an exception in the public eye. In the interest of acknowledging the basketball side of things exclusively, all because he is hanging up his cleats? No. That is inexcusable.
Legacy, if you’ll call it that?
Even for those widely celebrated, the fact remains.
It is never a simple exercise.
Thanks for informing me and others about sports and more.