On Saturday night at the United Center, the Chicago Bulls did what the city has been emotionally doing for more than a decade: they made Derrick Rose permanent.
Following Chicago’s 114–111 win over the Boston Celtics, sealed by a Kevin Huerter corner three with 0.2 seconds left, the franchise raised Rose’s No. 1 to the rafters, placing it in the company of the only Bulls jerseys already retired: Jerry Sloan (4), Bob Love (10), Michael Jordan (23), and Scottie Pippen (33).
It was a ceremony that felt less like a routine honor and more like a civic event, because Rose has never been just another star in Chicago. He is the rare athlete whose biography and mythology overlap neatly: a kid from Englewood, shaped on South Side blacktops, who became the No. 1 pick in the 2008 draft after the Bulls improbably won the lottery with 1.7% odds. He arrived as a local hope and turned into something bigger, an entire era condensed into one blur of speed, violence at the rim, and belief.
Rose’s career will always carry the twin truths that make him uniquely Chicago: the peak was real, and the heartbreak was, too. He won Rookie of the Year and, in 2011, became the youngest MVP in NBA history, an achievement that didn’t just validate a player but revived a franchise’s imagination. Then came the knee injury in 2012 that rerouted everything – the trajectory, the roster, the relationship between what the Bulls were and what they were supposed to become.
That’s why jersey retirement is the correct ending for Rose in Chicago. This honor isn’t only about the clean parts; the awards, the highlights, the No. 1 pick storybook. It’s also about the way a city stayed connected to him through the messier chapters: the rehab years, the “what if,” the eventual trade, and the long stretch where Chicago loved him from afar while he finished his career in other uniforms.
Rose, fittingly, has always talked about moments like these as communal instead of individual. When the team announced the retirement plan, he described it less as being placed beside legends and more as “celebrating everyone” who was part of the journey; the good, the bad, and the ugly. That spirit matched what the night felt like: a thank-you letter to a player who made a generation of Bulls fans believe again, and who represented a kind of hometown authenticity the league can’t manufacture.
There will always be arguments about Rose in basketball terms, how high the peak really was, what the injuries stole, what might have happened if the timeline had been kinder. But jersey retirement nights aren’t debates. They’re verdicts. Chicago’s verdict is simple: Derrick Rose belongs up there.
Not because his story was perfect, but because it was theirs.
