By Andrew Banks

I was minding my own business the other day not thinking about my former favorite athlete. A Twitter notification pops up on my phone alerting about something one of my followers retweeted. As a millineal my brain automatically told my thumb to click on it. I wish I had never opened it. I was suckered into watching a flash back clip of him in his prime. I’m only saying him because my therapist suggested not to say or type his name to keep my sanity in tact (Okay, I didn’t really talk to a therapist). But for you guys, I will open you up to the skeletons in my closet. Just watch this:

I’m a grown up about this now so I can do this. Derrick Martell Rose. Just typing it forces me to say it out loud in my head. Saying it in my head sends chills up my spine. You may think this is completely irrational for me to feel this way about another man that I’m not related to. But I can’t help the way I feel. I know I said he was my former favorite athlete but that is not entirely true. I still have love for him but I’m still salty about the way we ended things. I appreciate you guys hearing me out and letting me vent right now. It all started in the fall of 2010..

It was my freshman year at KU (rock chalk) and my boys loved to talk junk on D-Rose. My boy Isaiah swore that Deron Williams was better at the time. It wasn’t the worst argument but we all know Rose would cook Deron Williams one on one. Easy money. So when the NBA season started and the Bulls had the best record in the East, you know I was feeling myself. My other friend was a huge Lakers fan so I took every chance I had to rub in the fact that the Bulls were a better squad. He was a Kobe fan obviously but we all thought it was a little deeper than that. We roasted him over his obsession of Kobe and constantly told him he would do vulgar things to him. I can’t go into detail because I want to keep this PG but it involved Kobe and his mouth.

What made that season even sweeter was that Rose was really asserting himself as a force in the league. He was more athletic than Russ Westbrook and I mean that. His handle was rivaled only by Kyrie and Steph at the time. He was one of the best finishers in the league. He seemed to glide through the air when he attacked the paint. He had a floater like Tony Parker. He even shot a career high from 3-point range. He was putting everything together. I was making his case for MVP but of course none of my friends were having it. And what did he do? He brought the damn trophy home to Chi-town. The youngest player to ever win the award.

It was my proudest moment as a sports fan as sorry as that is to say. I was born in 1992 so most of those magical Bulls seasons I was too young to remember. My father moved us to Overland Park, KS so I was forced to root for a sorry Royals team and a Chiefs squad that was up and down but mostly down. I did not know what it was like to be proud of a team you loved.

The Bulls finished with the best record IN THE WHOLE ASSOCIATION. They had a better record than the Heat who had Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh at the time. That’s how good Derrick Rose was. He had a good supporting cast but it was not great by any stretch. Joakim Noah was their second best player and man was he ferocious. He was named to the All-Defensive Second Team. People forget how dominant Noah was defensively. He is the main reason why the Bulls had the toughest defense in the league that year. That was the Bulls calling card. They would defend you the entire 48 minutes. You were lucky to score more than 90 points against them. I believed that if we were going go win another title, it would have to be now.

The Bulls cruised through the playoffs only to be completely outmatched by the Heat 4-1 in the Conference Finals. It took me a while to get over that. I was salty for the rest of that summer. But I had optimism because I knew Rose was only going to get better. He averaged 25 points a game and almost 8 assists per game. However, I never got the optimism fulfilled.

The next season Rose dealt with numerous injuries and missed 26 games but the Bulls still had a 50-16 record in the shortened lockout season. He was back for the playoffs and had the game in the palm of his hand. Then, the most painful sports memory I would ever endure happened. April 28, 2012. First round of the playoffs against the Sixers. I remember it all too well. I was actually taking a nap because we had a comfortable lead and I was a little over confident. Rose came back from injury and looked great. Hitting threes, finishing in the paint and getting guys involved like a true point guard. They were up by 20 in the fourth quarter at one point. When I woke up, Rose was on the ground grabbing his knee. I can still hear play-by-play man Kevin Harlan utter those words that no sports fan wants to hear: Holding onto his knee… Holding onto his knee and down. The whole gym was silent. I will never forget the look on Kyle Korver’s face. It says everything you need to know.

The Bulls won the game but no one cared because their championship dreams were done. That was essentially the end of Rose’s career. That game will forever be remembered as such. He missed the entirety of the 2012-2013 season. He came back in 2013-14 but tore his meniscus in November. I was sick to my stomach. Part of me was mad at him for breaking down more times than the ice cream machine at McDonald’s. He made what seemed like 10 comeback attempts but he was never the same.

In 2014-15 Jimmy Butler was starting to overshadow Rose and became the better player. He won the Most Improved Player of the Year award as he averaged 20 ppg, 3.3 assists and 5.8 rebounds. I could tell he was quickly supplanting Derrick as the Bulls best player. Rose was inefficient that season as he relied more on the three ball with his athletic ability noticeably waning. In 2010-2011, 24% of his shots were three-pointers and he made 31.5% of them. Three years later, the ratio increased to 31% and he converted only 29.4%. What made matters worse was the relationship between those two players. Butler was not meshing with Rose or Noah. Everyone played it cool on the court but tempers were flaring off of it and Butler spoke out about Rose’s attitude during that season according to a report from Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times.

According to the source, Butler considers Rose a friend, but “doesn’t have a lot of respect for his work ethic.’’ In Butler’s mind, Rose was considered the face of the franchise, and if the face of the franchise wasn’t busting his butt in practice every day, especially last season, what was the message to the rest of the team?

Another report from Dan Bernstein of CBS Chicago.com detailed that this dysfunction between the two might have started with their loss in game 6 to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2015.

Sources describe a passive-aggressive reaction from Rose that was the culmination of tensions building in recent weeks with Butler’s emergence as a primary scorer. … Butler’s emergence was validated by the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award, and he’s now feeling every bit the star, with all that entails.

The Bulls missed the playoffs that year and Rose was traded to the New York Knicks. Playing with Kristaps Porzingis and Carmelo Anthony, there was hope that Rose could regain that magic he once had. That magic led the Knicks to an embarrassing 31 wins that season. In April he tore his meniscus yet again. He would need surgery on his knees for the forth time in as many years. To add insult to injury he also mysteriously disappeared before a game in January. He only played in 64 games.

In 2016-17 he signed with the Cavs as a free agent for the veteran minimum, as his value plummeted. He had a new role as a sixth-man on a contending team, but injuries once again led to him being traded and later waived by the Utah Jazz.

Now he plays for the Minnesota Timberwolves with his former coach from the Bulls Tom Thibedeau. Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson are on the team as well. Sort of a Bulls reunion of sorts. One has to wonder how Rose and Butler’s relationship was affected from their and if they can still play together effectively. He recently was resigned for another year this past July. These days he doesn’t have much lift. He rarely comes off the ground now. He is a rotation guard playing behind Jeff Teague and Tyus Jones. Inefficiency still plagues Rose today and unfortunately it has become his repuation

We were robbed of what could have been one of the greatest careers in NBA history. Most importantly I was robbed. I had never seen a player his size with his kind of bounce. Now, a guy like Dennis Smith Jr. is the closest thing we have to the old Derrick Rose, but he will never be him. He embodied the attitude of his hometown. Chicago southsider born and bred. The weight of his city on his shoulders. Perhaps it was too much to carry for one man, but Rose did not care. He accepted the challenge and almost succeeded. For that, he will always have a place in my memories and my heart along with the Chicago faithful.

Stats courtesy of ESPN.com