Au Revoir to Rose

At least for over a week now, the rumor mill regarding Derrick Rose has been stronger than ever.  On June 14, Basketball Insiders wrote about the potential of him being moved out of Chicago.  Last Friday, the New York Knicks were said to have internally discussed acquiring him.  On Wednesday, it all came to pass.

One day before the NBA Draft, the Bulls traded the 2011 MVP, Justin Holiday and a 2017 second-round draft pick to the Big Apple for Robin Lopez, Jose Calderon and Jerian Grant.  It marks a sad, but necessary end to the narrative of the hometown star ascending to greatness, only to have it derailed by injuries that began with an ACL tear in the 2012 playoffs.  He was never the same after that, only showing flashes of what he once was while also tearing his right meniscus twice.  He stands in line to be the only NBA Most Valuable Player not to make the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Lopez, the twin brother of Brook, will likely be the starting center as the replacement for Pau Gasol and Joakim Noah, both of whom are surely gone.  He's started every game he's played the last four years, completing the full schedule in three of them.  Last season, he averaged 10.3 points, 7.3 rebounds and a career-high 1.4 assists.  He probably won't be an All-Star, but he at least provides stability down low.

Like Rose, the 34-year-old Calderon has one year left on his contract, so this part of the deal covers the swapping of guys playing for their next payday.  Still, Calderon could make the most out of his one year in Chicago as the starting point guard unless the Bulls acquire someone better or with more potential.  He led the Knicks with 4.2 assists per game last season while also averaging 7.6 points and a career-high 3.2 rebounds over 72 games.  He shot 45.6 percent from the field and 87.5 percent from the free-throw line, so when given the right chances, he still has the shooting to succeed in the NBA.

Horace Grant's nephew Jerian just completed his rookie season out of Notre Dame.  In 76 games, he averaged 5.6 points, 2.3 assists, 1.9 rebounds and 0.7 steals.  That 39.4 percent shooting from the field will need to improve though if he wants to make a difference in this league.  And the Bulls will need to count on him to do it too since he's under their control through the end of the decade.

Let's face it though.  Whatever these three players can bring to the Bulls is all secondary in the fans' minds right now.  D-Rose is leaving home and it's very clear his former employer has decided to rebuild, or "retool" as Gar Forman is calling it.  People surely have strong feelings about at least one, probably both, of these developments.

No one meant for it to end like this.  By the time Rose was done as a Bull, they were supposed to have won a championship or at least gotten to the Finals once or twice.  There was supposed to be discussion among fans on where to put his statue at the United Center and anticipation of No. 1 being raised to the rafters.  Instead, a once very beloved figure, along with his camp, split the fan base and caused uneasiness within the organization with questionable decisions about playing time and comments that would have been best left unsaid.

So this Bulls fan at least is not so much saddened by how everything played out, but what could and should have been.  It's nobody's fault his body betrayed him so often and took the best of his gift away.  That's exactly what happened though and it set in motion debate over his value and commitment to the franchise.  How he achieved such polarity so quickly is absolutely mind-boggling.

It didn't help that the front office made its own questionable personnel decisions, which have made a rebuild, or retool, necessary.  The worse the Bulls and Rose got, the more his contract became an eyesore and many felt without moving it, the Bulls would be shackled and thus delayed in building for the future.  So no one party is responsible for what has transpired here.  Rose hurt his own cause by opening his mouth about meetings, graduations and his next contract, but if the Bulls were a Finals contender, people would have been more willing to overlook it.

So what happens now?  The Bulls have a long road ahead of them and pending another major move, they've chosen to travel it with Jimmy Butler as the centerpiece under Fred Hoiberg's system.  It might be a long time before they're seen as a threat again, which is something no fan wants to hear.  But the hard truth is NBA teams often flounder for years and never see any light at the end of the tunnel.

This will be a true test of every fan to see if they're willing to put up with a level of pro basketball not seen since the six years between the Bulls' last championship and their first post-Jordan playoff appearance.  The good news is there will be no expectations for awhile, so the pressure will be off.  Maybe that will make everyone a bit more relaxed.  Even if they come up short, you'll have guys who care and try, which would make the coming season more fun than anything we saw this past year.

Before wrapping this up, I want to address something that's been bothering me about certain people's perceptions of Rose for years.  Many of you know who you are.  Over his eight years as a Bull, I've heard many people heavily criticize him because of his SAT scandal, the sexual assault allegations from last summer and even his increasing proneness to injury.  Some of this goes back to before his ACL tear.

My message to this is clear:  Rose, and any athlete out there, owes the general public nothing.  It's great if they're model citizens, but it should be considered gravy and nothing else.  Charles Barkley famously said he's not a role model.  It's amazing more athletes haven't publicly taken this stand.

I'm not saying athletes can go out and commit transgressions whenever they want.  After all, they need to be members of polite society at the very least.  I'm saying as long as they didn't artificially affect competition, it's silly to let anything in their past that happened away from the stadium cloud your judgment of them as players in the present.  Granted, the Bulls didn't succeed with Rose like they wanted to, but if they had, he was a major part of it and you still couldn't enjoy it because of said past offenses, I would seriously question the type of fan you are.

The Bulls Rose I'm going to remember is the player who put excitement back into the team at a time when there was very little.  He was the player who took the league by storm and made the Bulls a team everyone had to look out for if they wanted to go far in the playoffs.  All that time before everything was derailed was the best time I had following the Bulls since I started in the late 90s.  It is for this reason I wish him reasonably well in New York and maybe someday, he can return in a capacity that will make him loved in Chicago once again.