Then, though—in 2008—the Bulls were amidst a near decade of pure hopelessness. Since Jordan and Pippen left the United Center with their 6 rings in tow for the last time in ‘98, the Bulls drafted Elton Brand, who became an All-Star, but then quickly gave way to the Tyson Chandler/Eddy Curry experience, which ended in disaster. Then the Bulls opted for an experienced, bona fide college superstar, Duke’s Jay Williams , a sure-fire franchise cornerstone, whose career disintegrated after a high-speed motorcycle injury. In those in-between years of even, monotonous mediocrity the Bulls tried it all: the inexplicably ill-advised shots of the Ben Gordon and Jamal Crawford eras , the inordinate amount of minutes played by Chris Duhon during the Scott Skiles regime, and even the dumbfounding I-am-drinking-Hennessy-in-the-locker-room-and-applied-for-a-job-at-Circuit-City-during-the-season Ron Artest years, which, of course, in hidsight were greatly underappreciated in terms of their comedic value from an entertainment standpoint.
Then we found out that we were on the cusp of the seemingly implausible, a 1.7% chance to land a product that was as emblematic of Chicago-style basketball as Belushi was a "chizbogah". I remember when we received word of the news. Even the girl we were with—a casually passive Bulls fan at the very most—knew who Derrick Rose was. She was shocked. She was hopeful. She was excited for the Bulls. She was probably just drunk and it’s all we talked about, so she seemed a part of the conversation.
What is remembered with less acuity by most, however, is the Beasley or Rose debate that engulfed the month preceding the draft. Beasley, akin in age to Rose, dominated the college basketball landscape more consistently than Derrick. His college stats are remarkable—26.2 points per game, 12.4 rebounds per game, almost 1,000 points (866) in a single season. Despite glaring character flaws like the fact that he attended six high schools , he was what many scouts and analysts referred to as the “safe choice”. Yet, Derrick Rose fit Chicago like tailored yoga pants; his game bled virtue, but often revealed vice if you watched him long enough.
I won’t fortuitously recall the detailed analytics of the Rookie of the Year campaign rose put together as a 20 year old, or even him becoming the youngest MVP in the history of the NBA at 22. You all recall those moments that were a part of that journey. Whether your specific highlight was his emasculating trounce over Goran Dragic’s manhood, or his quick-shift crossover that left Andre Miller on his seat at the free-throw line, you know who he was. The Derrick Rose skip-bounce-hybrid-runback after an emphatic dunk was a thing—he defined the phrase, “a bounce in your step”. You remember the “poo face” he would give after a game-clinching pull-up shot in the waning moments of a sluggish game in Milwaukee, or Washington, or Indiana. You remember his untucked half-limp, half-swagger that he would walk back to the bench with, his jersey recently untucked.
When he would approach the rim with an untamed ferocity never seen from a point guard.
When he singlehandedly turned Stacey King into a soundboard because he couldn’t control his impulsions.
When he became Chicago Bulls basketball.
When he became Chicago.
I remember as vividly as that aforementioned White Sox game, though, the first time D. Rose went down. I remember being 7 or 8 beers deep in Ryan Loch’s 3 flat in Lakeview jokingly Tweeting that some gummy bears or Skittles would numb the pain and he’d be back the next night to continue their waltz through the Wizards. I remember the 2nd guessing of Thibodeau that followed later, the unavoidable 4-straight losses that came in consequence, and the prolonged death of Derrick Rose, the Basketball Player.
Of course, the next year, Rose—who was never the most well-spoken of superstars—danced around the question. I still think he knew then. He knew then what we know now. A kid who had never really been hurt before, hardly an ankle or a wrist tweak, anything other than soreness, was vulnerable to the most ill-fated phrase in professional sports, injury-prone. As fans, we boiled over the fake reports and breaking news excerpts that revealed Rose was coming back for the playoffs, and then for the Heat series, and then maybe the Finals, if they got there. It was like a sick joke that your parents play on you as a kid, that if you eat vegetables and do your homework that you can watch Pulp Fiction or Die Hard with your dad. It just never came.
And then it happened again, to the other knee, and instead of feeling badly for him we, out of desperation,were less remorseful and greedy. We didn’t know how he felt. We just knew the dumb shit his brother said and the YouTube videos that immortalized his return to take down the villainous LeBron.
Now, on February 25th 2015, as much as I regret to say it, I believe Derrick Rose is dead as a Bull. From the onset of the ride on May 20, 2008, that fateful moment when the Bulls won the draft lottery and even a baseball stadium was frothing with an appetite for a new dream, that dream has since been differed. The ticker-tape parade has ended, and success—always—is unavoidably diversified with the most palpable disappointment.
I once heard Derrick Rose mentioned as comparable to a Ferrari, the most lavish and exhilarating of foreign sports cars. One with a reputation unprecedented; so much flash that you have to keep it under a blanket in your garage. It flies past other cars on the highway at speeds that other unremarkable cars just simply can’t build up to. It can turn on a dime and barely make an audible noise when it shifts into full acceleration again, whizzing around like one of those fluorescent trails of light that was once a Windows screensaver. Then, after a few years of turning heads, dropping jaws, and impressing shallow women amused by surface-level-sports-car-romanticism, unavoidably, a tire deflates a few iotas and shifts the balance of the car disproportionately. And then maybe pops. The wheels are never like the original set, and you can’t run the breathtakingly comparable machine with a captivatingly exotic bucking horse as its logo with parts from a Dodge. It just doesn’t work like that. It never has. It never will.
Its appeal is gone. And, like a shell of itself it sits unused in your garage and only evokes intrigue from your neighbors about what it used to look like in all its speed and glory.
Next thing you know, it sells. Some nameless car gypsy, or the nearest vacant lot takes you up on a sheepish bid. Still, you always smile wryly when you imagine what you once had. How in those transitory moments when so many other things seemed wrong, he made them right.
Thanks, Derrick. I sure hope I regret this.
