“That MVP year, we faced them in the playoffs and literally our whole game plan was somehow trying to figure out how to slow him down. “Then those first few years, he was just amazing,” Spoelstra told NBA.com recently. He immediately liked the quiet, humble kid with inner intensity. Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra met Rose before that 2008 Draft, grabbing lunch and watching him work out. The closest one is Ja and he doesn’t feel as powerful as Derrick.” “You don’t see point guards doing what he did. “Man, Derrick’s going to have highlights that live for eternity,” Thompson said. Then he was picked off like a clay pigeon, splintering as he fell from the sky. He had a meteoric start - Kia Rookie of the Year, three All-Star appearances, the MVP season, all marked by his lightning speed and vertical bursts above the rim - in his first four years. The heartbreaking thing with Rose, of course, is that his trajectory was pitched so much higher. He and Russell Westbrook are the only two Kia MVP winners from that group, with Kevin Love, Brook Lopez, Eric Gordon, Goran Dragic and Danilo Gallinari lining up in some order after that for peak value and career impact. Rose ranks sixth in points, fourth in assists, 13th in minutes and 16th in games played among those with whom he was drafted. He is one of only 13 players still active from the Class of 2008, and if you look at the Drafts preceding that one, you’ll find only 11 veterans still grinding. He is old enough to have been done by now even without the knee and leg injuries that sent him to surgery and rehab on an almost annual basis for four or five years. Seuss line:Ĭry that it happened or smile that it’s not over? Reflect on Rose’s star-crossed career long enough and you might hear a variation on an old Dr. He’s somebody that I was able to train and work out with for 10 years, and just to see his growth, I couldn’t be more proud as a big brother.” “Not just as a player for sticking with it but who he is as a person and what he stands for. “When you talk about expectations and people’s criticism and things he’s had to deal with on such a big scale,” Rose’s longtime teammate, Joakim Noah, said this week, “for him to be at peace in his mind and navigate that so gracefully, that just shows the character that he has. Had anyone known then about the breakdowns and setbacks he’d face, though, the mere idea of Rose still plugging along 15 years after being drafted would have seemed doubly unbelievable. Had anyone suggested in 2011 that Rose would spend the prime of his career bouncing from team to team, mostly backing up a series of non-All-Star teammates in a search for minutes, victories and fulfillment, it would have been hard to believe. You’ve got to adjust, and he’s adjusted incredibly well.” It’s the hardest part of the game, honestly. “Man, that’s so hard to go through as an athlete,” Thompson said. He’s back now but different, in ways that only athletes who have gone through this particular ringer can know. Like Rose, Thompson was forced to stare into basketball’s abyss by devastating injuries: first a torn anterior cruciate ligament, then a ruptured Achilles tendon. “Derrick at 34, it’s incredible,” Golden State’s Klay Thompson said Tuesday night in Milwaukee, icing his knees and feeling more connected to Rose these days than he did a few years ago. But it’s still going, which might be the most remarkable thing of all. Rose’s career hasn’t gone the way he, Chicago fans or anyone else imagined based on his precocious, explosive start. Now he’s 34, five stops removed, a backup guard with the New York Knicks and a living, breathing reflection on the passage of time. He was 27 when he last suited up for the Bulls. 1 in 2008, the hometown hope, the youngest Most Valuable Player in NBA history and the face and future of their franchise was 22 when he won that award. The guy who had been the team’s pick at No. CHICAGO - The NBA’s 2022-23 schedule has Derrick Rose playing consecutive games at United Center in Chicago for the first time since, well, since he was with the Bulls so many years ago.
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