CHICAGO (670 The Score) – In retirement, Bulls icon Derrick Rose remains grateful for his basketball and life journey.
“I cry every day,” Rose said.
For what?
“Being joyful, knowing like where I grew up, like coming back here,” Rose said.
Rose had another reason to be emotional Saturday, as the Bulls retired his No. 1 jersey in a ceremony after their 114-111 win against the Celtics. Rose became the fifth player in Bulls history to have his jersey retired, joining Jerry Sloan (No. 4), Bob Love (No. 10), Michael Jordan (No. 23) and Scottie Pippen (No. 33) in the United Center rafters. No Bull will ever wear No. 1 again.
A Chicago native who grew up in Englewood, Rose was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2008 NBA Draft. He won the NBA Rookie of the Year award in 2009 and was named the league MVP in 2011, becoming the youngest player in NBA history to earn the honor. Rose was a three-time All-Star while spending eight years with the Bulls from 2008-’16.
His talent, fearlessness, gravity-defying playing style and no-nonsense approach endeared himself to Bulls fans, who showed their appreciation for Rose with a series of thundering ovations and “MVP” chants during the jersey retirement ceremony.
In addition to Rose’s family, a bevy of former Bulls teammates, coaches and staffers were on hand to celebrate Saturday. Former teammates Joakim Noah, Taj Gibson and Luol Deng as well as former Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau accompanied Rose at center court for the postgame ceremony and spoke.
“Everything you do is with excellence,” Deng said. “You rose from this city.”
The high point for the Bulls during Rose’s tenure came in 2010-’11, when they won 62 games and reached the Eastern Conference Finals as he won MVP. They then went 50-16 and earned the No. 1 seed in the East in the lockout-shortened 2011-’12 season before Rose suffered an ACL tear in the first game of the playoffs. The Bulls never achieved their goal of winning a championship or got back to the East Finals, but their bond ran deep.
“When people talk about all the minutes, all the injuries, everything we went through, that’s our trophy,” Deng said of the Bulls’ bond and what Rose’s jersey retirement represented to them. “That’s our trophy, man.”
As Deng shared those words, Rose got emotional and wiped tears from his face. Thibodeau showered Rose with similar glowing praise.
“He was a basketball savant, and he had great courage,” Thibodeau told Rose and the United Center crowd. “He was never afraid of the big moment, never afraid to take a big shot and all the responsibility that went along with that.
But the thing that probably stood out more than anything else is his humility.
To have a leader like that made our special, it made them coachable and it made them together through thick and thin.
“It’s a well-deserved honor. The next stop, in my opinion, is the Hall of Fame.”
The theme of Rose’s speech – with a few detours here and there across 20-plus minutes – focused primarily on thanking his family and explaining what basketball and the city of Chicago meant to him.
“This journey was never about me,” Rose said in his pregame media session. “Like right from the jump, it was never about me. It was about creating a synergy that somehow people from the city can pull from. Somehow I was that beacon or that vessel from hooping. Now being 37 and looking at the totality of it, it never was about me. It was about everybody that found ways to come to my games.”
Cody Westerlund is an editor for 670TheScore.com and covers the Bulls. Follow him on Twitter @CodyWesterlund.