NBA teams
Jon Greenberg, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

New day dawns for Bulls

NBA, Chicago Bulls

CHICAGO -- As the saying goes, when Derrick Rose smiles, the whole city smiles with him.

Contrary to what you might think you know, Rose actually has a warm smile and an engaging personality in person.

But if you watched Bulls games the past two years, you watched Rose on the bench wearing expensive clothes and a full-court stare.

I was curious. What was the famously impassive Rose thinking about on the bench night after night, watching his prime seasons race by?

"Daydreaming about the game," he said in a one-on-one conversation after a charity event Saturday. "I'm always daydreaming. My mind is always racing. Some nights I can't sleep because my mind is racing too much. That's just who I am. I can't stop doing that. I've always been a daydreamer."

Neither Rose nor the legion of restless Bulls fans have to daydream about his return any longer.

Rose has played just 10 regular-season games in two years, existing in a "weird" basketball limbo as the Bulls scratched and clawed their way to playoff appearances, and nothing more, in both seasons.

As Joakim Noah evolved into an MVP candidate, the youngest MVP in league history rehabbed two separate knee operations that wound up costing him, and the Bulls, three consecutive postseason shots at LeBron James and the Miami Heat.

Now he's ready for a return to the limelight. There's no hype campaign this time around. It's more like a hope campaign.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, I joined Rose at the Adidas store on Michigan Avenue, where he talked to 20 teenagers from the After School Matters program, a local charity to which Rose recently donated $1 million.

Rose clearly enjoyed the Adidas-sponsored event, mostly because the event's host, radio DJ Leon Rogers, is a funny dude. Rogers cracked up Rose repeatedly over a half-hour or so, like when he thanked the Bulls star for donating another million to the fictional "Leon Rogers Foundation."

After a mostly unimpressive gold-medal stint with the national team at the FIBA World Cup and a mostly encouraging eight-game preseason slate, Rose is ready to return to the Bulls for a second time -- third if you count The Return that never happened -- when the Bulls open their season Wednesday night against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden.

If you dreamed about Rose gliding to the rim again, you weren't alone.

"I don't have them anymore, but I did have dreams about being back out there during my first injury," Rose said. "The second injury I didn't have that many, but the first injury I had a lot of dreams."

They weren't narrative dreams about a triumphant comeback, he said, just Rose playing basketball as normal. And what happened when he woke up?

"I had a brace on my knee," he said, laughing.

It's cathartic to laugh about it now for a still-young man who prefers to look toward the future and flush out negative thoughts.

The erstwhile king of Chicago, Rose has had a tumultuous past few years, even if only in the ecosystem that surrounds him, from buzzing PR employees to his brother Reggie to his small cadre of loyal friends and family.

Rose said his friends and his nieces and nephews are his "biggest haters," and they play a key role in keeping him grounded.

"If I'm wearing something crazy, they'll get on me, say my pants too tight," he said.

Someone send Rose's people to Dwyane Wade's house, please.

While Rose's inner circle is impenetrable, leaks abound and they're not always positive.

When a guy like Rose is quiet, the vacuum is filled with noise and speculation. From his botched return to the talk that he wouldn't recruit Carmelo Anthony this past summer, his halo has been publicly dimmed the last two years.

"I'm human, when someone first talks about you and brings something up about you which the subject is really touchy, you get touched by it if it's negative," he said to the After School Matters kids. "But being in this profession for seven years and playing basketball my whole life, it's always going to happen."

As for people who think he lost his love for basketball, Rose said: "You gotta laugh at it. I know, I'm the only who can really answer that question. I've been working on my basketball skills ever since I could remember."

Asked what's a big misconception about himself, Rose said: "A lot of people think I'm a mute. I'm not a mute, man. If I'm around my family and friends, I'm usually the one cracking jokes and telling stories.

"Or people say I look I'm always mad and I don't enjoy my life. I enjoy every thing about life. I love my life. That's totally opposite."

Rose particularly enjoys being a father to a busy 2-year-old Derrick Jr., known as PJ for Pooh Jr., with Rose being Pooh Sr.

During his talk, a bright-eyed PJ bounded around the Adidas store, kicking basketballs and soccer balls with glee. (Note to U.S. Soccer officials: Call Derrick Rose's kid today.)

"He loves people, man, he loves people," Rose said. "Just being around people and kids. He's a boy."

When he's not watching his son, Rose is gearing up for his first full season since the early salad days of the Tom Thibodeau Experience.

While Rose has spent two-plus years working on his fixing his once-invulnerable body, one of his regular talking points is how he's become a student of the game.

"It gave me a chance to learn, to get my basketball IQ higher and see what the team needed," he said.

Rose said he watches film with an extra attention to detail, down to how players react when he scores.

Despite a new cast of characters surrounding the Bulls' core, much is the same in Rose's universe. The Bulls are back to being one of the preseason favorites in the East, behind only James' new/old team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, who open the Bulls' home schedule on Friday.

Before his MVP season, Rose wasn't even on the radar for that honor. This year, the True Hoop collaborative predictions had him as the 28th-best player in the league, one spot behind Suns guard Goran Dragic and 16 behind Noah.

"I know I'm not a top-30 player," Rose said. "I know I'm much higher."

After years of worrying about himself, Rose has to change gears and lead a team. He's working on being more vocal, but leading by example is what the team needs.

"This is a huge task for me this year," he said. "This is almost a new team, we have new players and great players. For me to get the most out of everyone, I really have to challenge myself and hold everybody accountable."

As always, much will depend on health, and not necessarily for Rose. Right now, guard Jimmy Butler is ailing and Noah is nursing a surgically repaired knee. From a chemistry standpoint, how will the three-big rotation of Pau Gasol, Taj Gibson and Noah work together when all three want to finish games?

Can rookies Doug McDermott and Nikola Mirotic play significant minutes for a contender?

Will this be the season Thibodeau's head finally explodes on the sideline?

All important questions, but at the end it all comes down to Rose.

Can he make it through the season with a team, and a city, on his shoulders? It seems like another lifetime, but there was a period when Rose could do no wrong as he carried the Bulls to unforeseen heights, one drive to the rim at a time.

After two years of daydreaming about the past and the future, Rose seems ready to embrace his new reality.

"If I could do this all over again," he said, "I wouldn't want it no other way, because I know at the end, it's going to be perfect."

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