Chicago native, Bulls No. 1's two loves: family and basketball

[NJNJ]

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(CNN) -- He is someone you might want for a son. Except you can't adopt him. He's somebody else's favorite son. Derrick Rose, raised to be humble, groomed to be great, is Chicago Jr.

 

The place that gave birth to a bouncing basketball boy is thrilled that the kid, all grown up now, is still living at home. As the human blur of a point guard for the Bulls, Rose could become the team's first player since Michael Jordan to win the NBA's Most Valuable Player award. And while Rose may never reach the level of worship enjoyed by Jordan, there's a certain love for Rose that Jordan never knew. A love only a parent can give.

 

You see it nightly at the United Center, feel it in warm applause, sense it in a basketball season that's going Chicago's way. Rose justifies all the fuss with performances that manage to entertain fans and win games, a combination that makes him worth the price of admission alone. Really, what's not to love about a player with the speed necessary to reach the rim, and an improved outside shot that makes him deadly from 20 feet, and an air of confidence that has him and the city thinking anything's possible?

 

Here on the eve of the playoffs, where the Bulls will enter as the No. 1 seed in the East, he's pumping 25 points a game, good for seventh in the league, which would be fine if that was the whole story. But it is not.

 

He was born in one of the armpits of Chicago, a 'hood that would make Al Capone flinch, a place where kids like Rose don't need a GPS to find trouble. A quick pair of fists come in handy where Rose comes from, but best we can tell, all he ever beat up were stereotypes. Let's just say he doesn't carry himself in a way society has come to expect from young men raised on That Side Of Town.

 

Ego and me-me attitude? Oh, sure, he has one. Like any star who makes grown-ups slobber all over themselves, Rose brings a list of demands. A list the size of a postage stamp. And there's only one item on it: He asks for access to the Bulls' practice facility at all hours because sometimes the urge to work on his game dawns upon him at the break of dawn. Take last summer. After spending an entire day at his youth camp -- and you don't know the definition of "exhaustion" until you've worked with a few hundred boys with short attention spans -- Rose recuperated by shooting jumpers for a few hours at the team gym. And the season was still months away.

 

"I just want to win games and be true to my family, team, my teammates and the city," Rose said. "They've all given me so much."

 

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