CHICAGO — Inside the Vault Gallerie, a garage space-turned-pop-up in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, Derrick Rose fastens himself into a green canvas apron the shade of a stem. Etched near the neckline, beneath his logo, reads “Rose’s Flower Shop.”
Behind him, shelves with bouquets of red roses frame his backdrop. Gold-framed stills of him and his family stripping leaves and tending to the new family business accent the wall to his left.
For three hours, Rose mans a wooden console, smiling, laughing, embracing more than 300 people — a lot for a lifelong introvert. The children in line, who never experienced his high-flying basketball prime, shiver underneath their earmuffs. They were brought for an in-person look at his latest venture, a family-owned online flower shop, by parents who proudly don everything from Rose’s blue-and-gold Simeon Career Academy jersey to every color of his Chicago Bulls threads, those who still speak of him in mythical ways.
Anyone wrapped around the building waited at least an hour in nose-running cold temperatures for a brief moment inside Rose’s new world — and a chance to reel him back down memory lane with them.
They tear up and grin as they tell Rose how, as a 22-year-old hometown hero, he reignited the fandom that lay dormant in the postmortem of Chicago’s Michael Jordan era. How his heights as an MVP gave them memories to grip, moments with fathers and sisters and nephews. They still look at him, now bearded and with dreads that drape past his shoulders, and see a baby-faced version of Rose.
But Derrick Rose, the MVP, is a distant memory to the man himself. The way he prefers.
The Bulls will hang Rose’s No. 1 jersey in the United Center rafters Saturday — a visceral reminder of a chapter he’d like to close — and with it, he hopes to take another step into his evolving identity.
Derrick Rose spoke to the United Center audience during a halftime celebration for Derrick Rose Night on Jan. 4, 2025. (Geoff Stellfox / Getty Images)
Inside this pop-up, he’s reminded that his city, prideful about those they root for and possessive over their own, might make it impossible to step into his next chapter without being forced to look behind him.
But for these three hours, he’s exactly what he said he’d be when signing off from his address to Bulls fans during last January’s Derrick Rose Night: a businessman.
He wants the first impression of this venture to be intimate, something he wasn’t known for through his 16 NBA seasons. When he announced his retirement from basketball in the fall of 2024, he took out ads in the local newspapers of cities he’d played in. On this cold afternoon, Rose flips between metallic gold and bronze Sharpies and numbers preordered bouquets 1 through 300 on commemorative cards.
On rose No. 114, he cups his hand to form a half heart while posing with a middle-aged woman. He leans atop a wooden stand to record video messages. No. 182 hands him a rose of his own, wrapped in a black felt veil. No. 209 saw a woman gift him a notebook with Winnie the Pooh on the cover, a nod to Rose’s childhood nickname, “Pooh.”
At one point, he’s so lost in conversation with a family that they both forget why they were there. They walked away without roses.
“Flowers!” his assistant yelled at him.
“Oh, yeah,” Rose said, turning around for a bouquet.
Almost a couple hours in, Rose built a system. While people awaited their chance to reminisce, the line slowing as the place grew crowded, he decided he’d prewrite the numbers of several cards, spreading them on the counter so he wouldn’t lose track. He was efficient, like a true businessman.
These are Rose’s new habits. He looks to shake the old ones, and his old shadow.
“It’s about really living in that presence of not a predictable future and not a familiar past,” Rose told The Athletic. “I was done living in that time. I want to live exactly in the middle (ground), because I feel like when you live in a familiar past, that’s when people go into the talk of, ‘Man, I used to be …’
“The predictable future, that’s cool, but at the same time, you limit yourself. I never want to be limited.”
The 2011 NBA MVP trophy rests on a TV console, buried among the clutter of a home in transition. It’s collected dust in Rose’s home for two months. For years, it belonged to his mother, Brenda, and it stayed in her basement as part of a shrine of Derrick’s journey dating back to his middle school days. His brothers laugh about it.
Derrick’s trophy once sat next to his Rookie of the Year award, signature shoes, All-Star jerseys and all the things he didn’t care to own.
Derrick Rose was named the NBA MVP in 2011. (Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)
A decade has passed since Rose came to grips with the fact his on-court aspirations and his body no longer saw eye-to-eye. He’s long reconciled with his athletic peak. His chase for MVPs and titles, at the height of his powers, strangled him.
Ambition quietly became his personality. Before the injuries, he said he neared narcissism. Goal posts constantly moved, and Rose became unable to savor moments. He minimized his shouldering of his hometown team as his expectation for himself. Rose felt certain he could wield time. In his 2019 autobiography “I’ll Show You,” Rose said, “I don’t remember a night when I went to eat with my family.”
On his first contract, Rose became Rookie of the Year, a three-time All-Star, an All-NBA First Teamer and the youngest MVP in NBA history. He didn’t know it then, but that version of Rose ceased to exist once he tore his ACL in April 2012, during the opener of his third postseason, both physically and emotionally.
Before his return to play in October 2013, Rose fought to return to who he’d been. One month later, after 10 games, a right meniscus tear sat him down, forcing him to discover who he’d become. His suffocating obsession with basketball — “if I would’ve won one championship, I would’ve wanted four,” he said a year ago — became love, a necessary distinction.
The quiet star’s narrative quickly grew complicated. Through accusations of selfishness by fans tired of waiting months and years for Rose to return. For allegations of sexual assault. Time offered Rose a chance to look inward.
“Ever since I went through my case, that’s when everything changed,” Rose told reporters a year ago, referring to his 2016 civil assault case in which he was found not liable. “I told myself I was going to make a seven-year vow to do certain things and live on my rudiments. It took me a while to figure out why I was doing it, but I’m on Year 11, 12. I manifested this.
“So, I guess I’m doing something right. For one, finding my identity. Two, self-knowledge. Three, self-revelation. With those three, I was able to ask questions and figure out things that can not only help me, but the knowledge that can help my family and my friends around me.”
He’s spent far more time now learning about himself than he did as a franchise-altering superstar, no matter how well his ardent supporters freeze that moment in time. Famously taciturn for much of his early career, he almost reclines into introspection now. Why and when his tears form. The cold truths he appreciates about his short-lived superstardom.
Rose appreciates the bonds born from smoke sessions in road hotel rooms with Joakim Noah, towels under the door like sneaky teenagers, something they’ve recounted on podcasts in retirement. He appreciates the deterioration of his knees for the reflection it forced upon him. He cries every day, about “everything.”
He does not think about what heights No. 1 could’ve reached. At this stage, basketball to him is the vehicle toward revelation, not old glory. Rose wants to spend every moment possible chasing new dreams, ones that can’t swallow him whole.
“Once I did figure out I wanted to retire, I felt like I was liberated,” Rose said. “I feel like I could show who I really was as a person. … Right when I got done, I wanted to show that I was just creative.”
Growing up, Rose introduced himself exclusively as Pooh. He hated the name “Derrick.” In retirement, he’s sought meaning in his name. He found symbolism in Rose, tying his story and search for creative outlets to the blossoming of his namesake.
The name and idea came easily. But Rose’s Flower Shop, for him, represents legacy. Leading with his family’s name when he attempts to be taken seriously by a city who’s only known him as a player.
“It was (about) growth, being authentic and legacy,” Rose said. “The growth part is what you’re saying right now, us being able to curate something and really employ people. We giving back. Especially with me being here and understanding the economy, it’s hard times.”
The same applies to his insertion in freestyle chess; he refers to the sacrifices of his loved ones and his own risks in retirement “gambit moves.”It’ll also be true of whatever he decides to pursue in tech or in construction, both of which his wandering eye considers.
In poverty, Rose scavenged for ways to provide as a kid. He lost his innocence early, shooting dice as a kid in Murray Park. He pumped gas. He sold shoes that sneaker companies secretly slipped him as a prized grassroots player at a fraction of retail. He beat older players in the neighborhood one-on-one for money.
This isn’t scraping the pot. This is the rewriting of a man who craves an arc more fulfilling than reliving his 15-year-old accomplishments. This is his hope to explore creativity where it once seemed devoid, to find meaning in his new walk, even while he’s constantly reminded of what his younger self means to others.
“We never thought that we would be florists,” Rose said, “but at the same time, we’re implementing incentives into the workshops and everything where you can go tell a kid, ‘Hey, go knock on that door and ask that woman: Do she want roses?’ If she do, you get $25 to $50 a house, and that’s a clean way of hustling.”
Rose fantasizes about building a home library for his children reminiscent of Hogwarts. A collection so large that it’s organized in columns, so many books he couldn’t fathom reading them all. He asks his oldest son, PJ, to fetch what he’s reading. He returns with Dick Gregory and J.A. Rogers.
Reminiscing, marinating in his past success, would leave less room for this. He calls knowledge privilege, a sentiment tattooed on him. He claims certain works — he digs into Rogers’ “World’s Great Men of Color, Volume II” — call to him. He perks up at the way he’s reclaimed his time.
“Bro, who else is walking around with a thesaurus?” Rose said. “Like, seriously. I know I don’t need it because I think I know how to articulate myself, but to just gain knowledge, more knowledge. … I wasn’t trained to really be a student. So, now that I’m in this seat, I have to play catch up to you.”
But it always comes back to hoops. How can you uproot that rose? How can you extract the image of the fearless South Side guard who showed kids in the city they could soar and hit game winners, from the 37-year-old attempting to step outside the shadow of his career?
Are they even meant to live as separate entities?
“Who knows? All I know is I’m here to help,” Rose said. “And you will see that within the action. So, D-Rose or whoever you call me or whoever this next person is or what this next phase of my life is — I’m willing to help.”
Derrick Rose has been watching with his son, PJ, develop into a basketball player. Derrick said it’s a love he refuses to force on his son. (David Banks / Imagn Images)
PJ Rose entered the world roughly six months after his father tore his ACL, and 17 months after he was named MVP.
Derrick sat with him as a younger child, granting him the autonomy to choose a sport. He never knew his own, but he’s aware of the obsessive fathers in sport who live vicariously through sons, those who grit their teeth and grind their shortcomings into their children.
“What I’m not gonna be is Joe Jackson,” he said, referring to the demanding patriarch of the Jackson 5.
Derrick takes the steps to try to put his basketball past behind him. But he did not pass down the chess gene. It’s all come full circle, with his son embarking innocently on his own hoop journey, inevitably compared to his father.
PJ is a 13-year-old power forward. When Derrick watches the NBA, it’s because his son is. Derrick catches quarters, PJ watches games.
He surmises his son will sprout to 6-foot-4, maybe 6-5. Derrick describes watching him as a beautiful experience. It’s still too early to tell if he inherited a fraction of that earth-shattering athleticism or tunnel vision, or if he’s anything like his father.
And, perhaps for the better, he’s still too young to grasp the emotions competition brought his dad. The compulsion Derrick felt to become the man. The agony of grappling with the first injury. The endurance to search for his soul on the other side of the second. The acceptance to settle on longevity.
Once PJ made his choice, Derrick knew he needed to raise him in Chicago. They live miles away and many feet above Murray Park, their home overlooking the city, but the kids from Morgan Park to Whitney Young, from Out West and Over East, will bring PJ his education. The way these playgrounds inflated Derrick’s chest.
Derrick Rose’s son chose basketball all on his own.
He chose to walk with the game Derrick has long made peace with, which dictated so many of the decisions in his life. Once his son decided to take it seriously, Derrick knew his obligation to nervously provide the guidelines. PJ inevitably reeled him back in.
“It’s like, do you know what you signing yourself up for?” Rose said. “The good, the bad, the ugly. … He going down the path of the ugly and the injuries. It gotta be injuries. Am I gonna be able to deal with that? That’s what I gotta prep myself for, ’cause he’s really taking the steps forward to be able to become a pro.
“And with him becoming a pro comes along the ugly. And all the times that I injured myself, I used to always tell my mom, ‘I’m good, I’m good.’ Bro, they get sick, I’m up in here putting essential oils on them, all type of s—. So for him to say he loves this s— — you gotta get bruised up. S— happens, and I gotta kinda prep myself for that.”
Among his lessons, he places a wedge between obsession and love. For Derrick, obsession began as the separator between him and his peers before giving way to isolation. Love for the game proved healthy, illuminating even, though it took longer to find. Few learned like Derrick did in the twilight years of his career, when the MVP chants ceased, how difficult it becomes to sift out your evolving identity after occupying such lofty air.
Obsession can be warped, the accompanying spirit liable to be tarnished. But love is the baseline. It’s what vaulted Rose toward acceptance when his vision shrank and he opted to understand what the injuries, the time, all were telling him about himself.
Rose swallows the fact he wasn’t geared for the circus attached to stardom. Could his son stomach what occurs when outside entities challenge that obsession, that love? To find himself if the dream ever fades?
Derrick knows the way.
“I won’t be the last hooper to be quiet,” Rose said. “Like, you know how Kawhi (Leonard) is. I won’t be the last one. But at the same time, you can navigate through that by being yourself. That’s the example I want to be. You don’t gotta fit in like that. You could do your own thing and still love the game, love your peers and everything. I was never a fit for it. My personality was never fit for it.”
Chicago embraced him anyway, perhaps now as much as ever. Rose, for his rise and fall, his improbable landing with his hometown Bulls and his abnormal ascension, was a comet. The city will forever try to recapture that.
That they clutch that moment in time tighter than he does was almost inevitable.
“It’s in sync,” Rose said. “It has to be, because everybody gon’ always love the way that I played. So, even though I want to push or separate myself from that, I’m always gonna be a part of the NBA, a part of the Bulls (and) the fabric of it because I felt like I gave my all. Looking at MJ and all that, I have no regrets, just like he had no regrets when he won six, I feel the exact same way.
“I have no regrets, bro. I feel like I maxed out.”
He survived as Pooh. He was lionized, then crucified, then immortalized as D-Rose, a forever MVP to those who lived through the proud blur that were his Bulls teams.
He’ll live out his days watering the seeds of Derrick.
