Derrick Rose

He gone, as Hawk Harrelson would say.  Yesterday, the Bulls traded guard Derrick Rose to the Knicks in a five-player and draft-choice deal.  Call it a painful, if necessary, divorce.

Growing up, I looked at athletes as buffer versions of my father.  If Wayne Causey of the White Sox—I got Causey’s autograph at the Back of the Yards’ Free Fair in the summer of 1966—had told me to jump out a window, I probably would’ve done so without question.  Little did I know that Causey was a relative kid at 29-years old.  And how old is Rose?  He’ll be 28 in October.

Athletes have always been pampered; only recently have they been made insanely rich as well.  It’s hardly a combination that encourages maturity; just ask Patrick Kane.  Rose has had his share of celebrity misadventures, and it could get worse in the Big Apple, where people think modern basketball was invented.  (Note to Spike Lee and other Knicks’ fans—it wasn’t.)  Personally, I hope things go well for Rose.  God knows, a whole bunch of demons came along with that $94.3 million contract he signed in 2011.   

I don’t particularly care about Derrick Rose the player; it’s the human being who matters.  I heard that Rose recently contacted family members of someone who was gunned down on the streets of Chicago (a phrase not nearly as romantic as “the streets of Laredo”).   That shows me something, that maybe an athlete can be the sort of person a 13-year old boy thought they were.