The former NBA player, Derrick Rose, who primarily played for the Bulls and the Knicks amid four other teams in his career, recently sat down with Sports Illustrated for an interview after he was named the cover athlete for the upcoming NBA 2K27 video game.
He opened up about several topics like his feelings after receiving the cover athlete news, the Knicks’ championship run, and much more.
“I was blown away. I mean, I play the game from time to time. Like normally when the game first comes out, I play it a lot with my son. Then he kind of blows me away or he blows me out by the second week, so I stop playing, but I always been a fan. I always participated and I love being a part of the paradigm,” said Rose on becoming the 2K cover athlete.
“When I look back, I think that I gave my all. Like, I don’t have any regrets. I know that each day, each practice, each surgery, each rehab, I attack. So that’s one of the reasons why I felt like I could walk away from the game the way I did,” Derrick Rose further added in his reflection of his basketball journey.
“Just be cool with going to the gym and not caring about shooting jump shots or anything, bro. Not caring about the lights. I love the presence, the moment, the state that I’m in right now. So, yeah, I don’t have any regret.
“I came in a league where everybody took the job. They were a little bit old and immature. So, no matter who you played against, they was going to play their hardest to try to outplay you. So I respected that and I gave respect and I got respect back.”
The reporter then asked the former Knicks player about his old franchise winning a championship this season. He claims that as soon as he found out that they are facing Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs in the NBA Finals then they are going to certainly win.
“I kind of had them winning almost the entire time. My son is a Jalen fan, so he was cheering for him the whole playoffs. Yeah. I called Rick right before they got to the finals and told him that they was going to play against Wemby now. So, and if they was going to play against him, that they was going to win.”
“So it worked out. And I’m just happy for Jalen [Brunson]. Happy for his family, like Rick, all the time that he put into, like, his family and Jalen now and his daughter. Like, I watch from afar, but it’s inspiring,” Rose added.
Amid the eye-opening recent comparisons between Jalen Brunson and Derrick Rose, the ‘King of New York’ would certainly love to hear that the Chicago legend was so confident in Brunson’s abilities to carry his team beyond the finish line.
Rose then dove into his own NBA legacy when the reporter asked him about how he wanted to be remembered in the league. He had a very humble response, acknowledging that he is prone to be forgotten soon.
“I played hard. I was a winner. And to be honest, the way my story kind of went, they’re x amount of years, they’re not going to remember me.”
“So, it’s going to be the kid that actually do his due diligence that look up my story to find out my story, ’cause it’s a lot of players that don’t know Wilt Chamberlain and he broke a lot of records and got all the awards and got hella accolades.”
“But these kids today don’t know who he is, or they don’t know Bill Russell and he got the most championships. So, who am I to say that they going to remember me? They probably don’t. But the kid that do, I hope it’s not by coincidence,” Rose concluded.
Despite being the youngest MVP in NBA history, Derrick Rose never won a championship himself. And from what he can see happening with today’s generation and Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain, two of arguably the biggest names in NBA history, suddenly seeming like forgotten chapters in storybooks.
Rose hopes that someday, in a time where most people have forgotten who he is, a child does his research to find out about him. And he hopes that if he manages to inspire to inspire even that one child in the future to a level where he remembers him for his life, he will know his legacy is exactly what he wanted it to be.
NBA 2K27 has been globally launched tonight and Rose will be on the cover of each game. We can only hope that some day in the future, even seeing a cover of this game fascinates a young child into reading about Derrick Rose and is inspired into changing his life. That would be a storybook ending for Rose’s NBA legacy.
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