Rose retires, but two lingering controversies remain
Everyone has their pet peeves, work-related or otherwise.
A couple of mine directly involve the career of former Bulls guard Derrick Rose. So this is an ideal time to address annoyances and grievances of the past, as Rose announced his retirement Thursday after 15 NBA seasons.
The Bulls will likely retire Rose's No. 1 jersey, though it's not clear when.
The first pet peeve is when anyone suggests Rose shouldn't have won MVP in 2011. Generally, this argument is based on someone looking at stats and deciding Rose's 25 points and 7.7 assists were inferior to LeBron James' win-shares or something along those lines.
First of all, this is a very Homer Simpson-esque “Everyone's stupid but me” argument. Rose received 113 of 121 first-place votes from people who actually covered the NBA that season. Also, James didn't even finish second in the voting, Dwight Howard did.
Remember, this was the first year of the Power Trio in Miami and James had it pretty easy after taking his talents to South Beach. Much of the Heat's offense was simply James and Dwyane Wade taking turns in isolation. Roughly 50% of James' season was spent standing near the sideline watching Wade cook.
Rose, meanwhile, played 81 of 82 games, shared a backcourt with Keith Bogans, and had Carlos Boozer as his second-leading scorer. Joakim Noah missed 34 games that season. Yet Rose carried that Bulls team to the NBA's best record at 62-20. Rose absolutely deserved to be MVP and it wasn't even close, as illustrated by the voting.
Another popular fallacy is that Rose never would have overcome Miami in the playoffs because LeBron could guard him in crunch time and it would be game over. That was a factor, but take a closer look at Games 4 and 5 of the 2011 Eastern Conference finals. Rose missed a free throw late in both games that could have changed the outcome, so it's incorrect to say James shut the door in the fourth quarter.
The biggest issue was Miami shot 28 more free throws than the Bulls in those two contests. As established stars, James and Wade were given plenty of free trips to the foul line. Rose wasn't, even though no one in the league was more aggressive attacking the basket.
And don't forget, if Rose hadn't torn his ACL in the 2012 playoffs, the Bulls would have replaced Bogans with Jimmy Butler a year later.
Instead of that tantalizing scenario, we got one of the strangest few weeks in Bulls history: The saga of “Why isn't Rose returning from his injury?”
This is the setting for Pet Peeve No. 2. Later in his career, Rose complained about being treated unfairly by the media, but that's really not the case. There was one writer that didn't like him, otherwise Rose was treated well by hometown reporters.
During the 2013 playoffs, Rose would work out before games and people wondered if he was planning to return. The Bulls even planted a story with anonymous quotes from a team doctor saying Rose was healthy enough to play.
What really would have helped is if just once, he had walked over and told us his side of the story, shared how he was feeling. Instead, snippets of info popped up here and there — “Hamstrings are on fire,” was one — and eventually he did a sit down interview with USA Today.
I remember a shootaround at John Jay College during the 2013 playoff series against Brooklyn, asking coach Tom Thibodeau if there was any chance Rose would play in the next game (Hey, someone had to ask). He gave me a look like, “Come on, man, you're smarter than that.”
Yeah, we all knew Rose wasn't coming back that season. And it sure would have been helpful if Rose had talked about his progress instead of leaving everything open to speculation. Overall, Rose was great to deal with, but his complaints about Chicago reporters are misguided, in my opinion.
One other memory that stands out is when Rose unveiled the remodel of an outdoor basketball court where he grew up playing the game in Englewood. I asked if he could do anything to help kids in his old neighborhood, what would it be? His answer was give them something to do, somewhere to go after school.
Now that Rose has become a chess enthusiast, here's hoping he creates the greatest youth chess team on the South Side.