Derrick Rose Reveals The Real Reason He Retired
It wasn’t because of injuries or business or any of that.
Derrick Rose is one of the nicest basketball players you’ll ever meet.
And I don’t mean nice as in skilled or talented -though that definition does apply- I mean nice as in a kind person.
He is respectful on the court, has good sportsmanship and is a good teammate.
He was even a finalist for the Teammate of the Year Award back in 2022-23.
These are some of the reasons why the majority of people like him. But once you find out the real reason he retired, you’ll like him even more.
On the Club 520 Podcast, Rose said he decided to retire from the NBA because he wanted to spend more time with his kids.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while bro, but what I was just telling y’all in the room about like giving your all to your kids. Like, my younger kids, they don’t mention the game at all. They don’t ask about ‘Are we going to the game?’ They don’t say nothing, bro.”
Rose also added he had to tell his son, PJ, about the retirement differently.
He said PJ is in the basketball world and wanted to see his dad continue his career. But Rose said he had to let his son know that now that he doesn’t have to travel for games anymore, he’ll be able to spend more time with him in the gym and this made PJ happy.
“At first when I told him, of course, devasted, hurt. But after I kept talking to him, he was excited cuz he seen like, ‘man, now I get this individual time with my dad.’”
Additionally, Rose talked about his retirement campaign, for lack of a better term, where he took out pages in newspapers to thank all the people who helped him throughout his career and sent roses to them.
He said he and his team wanted to do something different from releasing a press release about his decision.
“Me and my team just decided to come up with something different, you know? We did that within like, two weeks… But this whole s—t was about giving back or flipping everything on its head, where normally, when you do something like this, you receive the flowers. But I didn’t get here by myself.”
Rose played in the NBA for 16 years and announced his retirement on September 26, 2024.
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