What Other NBA Stars Can Learn from Chicago Bulls' Derrick Rose
The last two years have been dominated with headlines about Chris Paul being traded, Dwight Howard being traded or Big Threes being formed. With all of those players being older than Derrick Rose, they should be looking to the junior MVP for guidance.
The truth is that Rose is showing a kind of maturity they haven't.
Everywhere you look, you have players trying to be GMs. Dwight Howard wants to be traded because he isn't consulted in GM decisions, although he says this could have been avoided if only he'd been consulted in player decisions. Howard says,
"“I’ve talked to a lot of guys and they’ve expressed a lot of interest and would come here, and I’ve expressed that to the correct people, and none of it’s happened.”
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Really? That's the problem. Dwight Howard wasn't allowed to be the GM of the team.
Then of course, you have the Big Three and their great desire to play together to win, not five, not six, not seven...championships. Rather than build a team, though, they thought to take the easy way out and collude one.
Kobe Bryant a few years ago was ready to pout his way out of Los Angeles because he wasn't satisfied with the level of talent the Lakers had surrounded him with.
Now he's at it again, or according to some, will be soon.
So while everyone is insisting that they are worthy only of playing for winners and with other great players, it's nice to see a comment like Derrick Rose's.
Asked if he was comfortable helping to recruit Howard to extend his list to Chicago, Rose's response couldn't have been more different than the tone of other stars, according to ESPN Chicago.
""I've never been a coach," he continued with a laugh. "I don't know how the conversation would go, actually, if I called him. 'What's up?' or whatever? I don't know how to even approach someone about coming here. It would be super hard.'""
No super-friends here, just super hard. Rose expanded,
"No, I haven't talked to him. You know me, I think Chicago speaks for itself marketing-wise. It's a great place. Why wouldn't anyone want to come here? He's probably been getting calls from everyone. Everybody's trying to talk to him, but no, I haven't talked to him.
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Rose does something remarkable in this day and age. He leaves the coaching to the coach. He even makes phone calls to the coach to ask for coaching.
He leaves the personnel decisions to the GM. What a crazy notion!
So what does Rose do? He does his job. Don't think for a moment that doesn't have something to do with the Bulls having one of the best locker-room presences in the NBA. It's no wonder that even a player like Richard Hamilton, who was caught up in the worst locker-room situation in the league last year, comes to the Bulls and says,
""Whatever the team needs, whatever the team needs, man, because the biggest thing I want is to win a world championship," Hamilton said. "I won it once, had an opportunity to win it again and didn't. Now it's the opportunity to feel good that you have a chance again. I'm excited."
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And that has more than a little to do with the locker room presence of the team.
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There's something about this kid. He doesn't try and do things the cheap way or the easy way. He does them the hard way; he works for it. His teammates see that and it rubs off. You'll never hear him complain.
When the Bulls lost in the Eastern Conference Finals, you didn't hear him complain. You didn't hear him say "get me a shooting guard!" Rather, what you heard him say was that it was his fault. In fact, Rose believes that everything that goes wrong on the court is his fault...literally!
""I'm hard on myself," Rose said. "Any mistake I do during a game, I think that everything is my fault. I don't really look at others. I hold myself [responsible] for everything...because I have the ball the majority of the time...I think that when I pass to people and they make a bad shot or whatever, I think it's my fault because I put them in that position. Being a point guard, you think that way."
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Derrick Rose, and to a degree Kevin Durant, are who the NBA stars should be looking to emulate. Rather than trying to develop super-teams and manage and/or coach the teams, they should just be focusing on being their best.
Frankly I'm tired of the prima donna act from so many of the NBA's stars. Just shut up and ball, and if you do it well enough, they will come. If they don't come, just beat them and make them wish they had.
It would be nice to see more players emulating that.
