Derrick Rose has lived a life of extremes. Nothing to everything. Poverty to riches. Once a local high school phenom in Chicago, Rose arrived on the national scene during his lone year in college at Memphis. Then he went from number 1 overall draft pick (to his hometown Chicago Bulls) to NBA MVP and was seen as the answer to all the prayers of people who needed an anti-LeBron James to root for. Rose then went from MVP to bench-warmer, after a series of injuries. Perhaps more interestingly, though, has been Rose’s evolution (or devolution) from one of the most popular players in the league to now pretty much universally disliked. True to the narrative, Rose entered the league characterized as the hard-working, soft-spoken professional most fans say they want their favorite players to be, to now seen as the epitome of the selfish, says-too-much athlete who can’t get out of his own way.
See also Jack Moon Perrin’s Take on Rose’s Media Day Comments: http://old.lastwordonsports.com/2015/09/30/chicago-bulls-emperor-derrick-roses-new-clothes-unfortunately-new-injury/
Injuries aside, Rose’s off-court fall from grace is largely his own doing. His recent comments at Bulls media day about looking forward to free agency two years from now and worrying about his family’s financial stability – when he’s already amassed contracts netting him $280 million from the Bulls and Adidas – were, and are unjustifiable. For Rose especially, who grew up with nothing in one of the worst parts of Chicago, his comments are tone deaf. Chicago remains one of the most racially and economically segregated major cities in America, which only adds to the lack of self-awareness, or lack of social-awareness by Rose. But to join the angry mob with their pitchforks and torches in criticizing Rose for what he said without making an effort to understand some context can tip-toe towards being as intellectually lazy as Rose’s comments were.
It is interesting that – with Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets – there’s no shortage of athletes commenting on other athletes’ behavior, yet there hasn’t been a single NBA player, on the Bulls or otherwise, that has publicly dismissed Rose’s sentiments. There have been crickets across the sports landscape as far as other athletes’ commentary. Drawing conclusions from silence may be a bit presumptuous, but it’s probably safe to say that Rose isn’t the only NBA player to think the way he does about money, contracts, or the importance of the game in general. He’s just the only one saying it out loud (and not very eloquently). The other players have the foresight to know the backlash that comes with actually saying what’s on their mind.
Some of the Rose-bashing that is taking place now might be on us, the sports-viewing public. We might have misdiagnosed Rose from the get-go as the soft-spoken, grind-it-out athlete we crave so much. That’s true a lot in sports. We wish so badly for our athletes to represent the things we want them to represent, but oftentimes that would be to turn those athletes into something they are not, or to set an impossible standard for the athletes we tend to forget are flawed human beings … just like the rest of us. The difference between what we want an athlete to be and who an athlete is, along with the extremes in which Rose has existed in offer something in the way of an explanation towards why Derrick Rose is misunderstood.
It’s cliche, but professional athletes are men playing a kids’ game. For most athletes, the result of that is a bit of arrested development. Of course, not physically, it’s pretty clear they won the genetic lottery in that department. Where we saw a quiet kid coming out of Memphis, the reality is that Rose might have been dealing with some social anxiety when it came to dealing with the media; he might have been thoroughly overwhelmed with public speaking and the like. Now that he’s older and the “face of the franchise,” the interaction with the media and public speaking are unavoidable. That’s where Rose gets himself in trouble.
For Derrick Rose, his injury situation has left him in a unique place. He should be at his absolute peak physically, as well as entering his prime as an intellectual human being, having his unfortunate upbringing turned into been-there, done-that wisdom. But his knees have put him in a situation where he’s prematurely facing his own athletic mortality, and his social skills still lag behind, making it hard for him (or anybody) to adequately articulate where he sees his place in the basketball world.
Rose could’ve said something close to what he actually did say, but would have bought himself a world of good had he sanded down the rough edges. He probably sees his next contract as his last chance to score a huge deal before his body and time take basketball away from him, so what he means and what he says aren’t necessarily the same thing, but having to translate everything he says into what he means only makes it more infuriating to keep giving him chances.
To add to his unique situation, Rose was tasked with leading the Bulls to a championship from the day he was drafted. When injuries took him off the court, there had to have been times over the past few seasons where Rose felt isolated in his own locker room, getting glares from his teammates, left to wonder if his team was winning despite him, or in spite of him. He’s a guy who’s all too aware of the fact that a player’s future can be dramatically altered at any sliver of time. He also might feel like he’s a superstar talent unwanted by his own team. One thing that Rose articulated all too clearly is that he’s looking out for himself and his family above all else. The forces of nature – the injuries – and the fan base that’s probably never understood their hometown superstar to begin with have sort of left Rose with few other options.
Playing a professional sport in one’s own hometown and having teammates and hometown fans turn on you could be damaging to anybody’s psyche. That might lend some merit to why Rose has backed himself into a corner, why he feels forced to adopt a me-against-the-world motif. Derrick Rose is surely not the only professional athlete who could be described as selfish.
But the one thing Rose can’t lose sight of is, that no matter how badly he wants to take care of himself and his family, it has to start with in on-court play. If he does lose sight of that, his career could be over and he doesn’t get the additional financial security he seeks. If he doesn’t lose sight of that, he may salvage the rest of his basketball career. If he returns to something close to the MVP-caliber player he once was, his recent comments will be but a footnote to a footnote in his career biography. The best way to achieve success for Rose now may be to find a happy medium between the extremes that he’s swung back-and-forth between to this point. Let’s just hope the Basketball Gods, and us, the sports-viewing public give him that chance.
