Derrick Rose doesn’t need validation from critics
After his first practice in Minnesota, Derrick Rose spoke to reporters, and he wasn’t shy when it came to sharing his thoughts on what doubters and critics may think.
According to a report in the Minnesota Star Tribune, Derrick Rose was asked about the contingency of supporters pulling for him to revive his career as well as the collection of voices and opinions that believe he has nothing left to give.
His response spoke more towards the latter, which has also been the more prevailing of the two sentiments for the last several years of his career:
"“I mean, this is how I feel about it, the whole perspective on it.”“You can have your perspective on me, as far as I’m a bum, I can’t play, I can’t shoot, this and that. All right, cool. I have no hard feeling with that. I’m cool with that. If that’s how you feel, that’s how you feel.“But at the same time, I don’t need your f*****g validation. Like, I know who I am. I know the type of player I am. You respect that and I respect that and we should be good.”“That’s how I feel about that.”"
Rose signed with the Cavs this past offseason and appeared in seven of the team’s first eleven games before missing most of November and all of December with ankle injuries. In late November, he took a leave of absence from the team to evaluate his future and whether or not he wanted to continue his NBA career. At that point, most people would not have been surprised if we’d seen the last of Rose in the NBA.
He did, however, return to play limited minutes in a handful of appearances in January before he was dealt to Utah in a three team deal at the trade deadline. The Jazz waived him two days later and for the second time in two months, it looked like we might have seen the last of Derrick Rose on an NBA court.
But he rose (pardon the pun) from the ashes again and signed with the Timberwolves on March 8th. Even though he feels he has nothing left to prove, he feels that he has something left to give and feels like he’ll be in a more comfortable position on a team that has reunited him with former Chicago teammates, Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson.
It’s easy to forget that there was a time when Rose was right there with Russell Westbrook in the conversation of most athletic guards ever to play the game. He was drafted first overall by Chicago and won rookie of the year in 2009. He went onto win MVP in 2011 and he was electric as he averaged 25 points and nearly 8 assists per game. His future was as bright as any player in the league before he tore his ACL in the 2012 playoffs. Rose would miss the entire 2012-13 season recovering and then a torn meniscus early the next year caused him to miss three-fourths of the 2013-14 season.
That was basically the beginning of the end for Derrick Rose who was never the same after. He would miss significant time in 2014-15 with another knee injury and made matters worse for himself when he told reporters that he was more concerned about not being sore by the time his 2-year-old son was graduating than he was about rushing back from another knee injury.
It turns out that Bulls fans and voices around the NBA weren’t wild about hearing that from a guy that had signed a 5-year $94MM contract three years earlier. It also turns out that Brett Michaels and the guys from Poison were more than just big hair and power ballads. They were also prophetic songwriters. In 1988, the year Rose was born, the band’s No. 1 hit featured the lyrics, “Every night has its dawn / Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song / Every Rose has its thorn.”
If the Bulls’ front office had heeded Poison’s warning, maybe things could have been different. Instead, as Poison predicted, Derrick Rose, like every rose, had its thorn. With the three All-Star years would also come three years of disappointment and frustration for Chicago and most of $94M down the drain. The rest of Rose’s career in New York and Cleveland has basically been a sad, sad song.
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Maybe Derrick Rose’s career hasn’t quite reached its dawn yet and he can hold on for one more run in Minnesota. Not that he needs my validation, but I hope he has a little something left in the tank.