Derrick Rose Isn't Humble, He's Injured; Another Example of the Sports-Talk Radioification of Modern Sports Journalism

It's all about attention. That's a lot of what is wrong with modern sports journalism and a lot of journalism in general. I don't listen to talk radio. I should say I no longer listen to sports-talk radio because it's all about getting attention and having the hottest sports take. Naturally, a lot of this starts to bleed into written sports journalism as well. This column written by Dan Bernstein states that Derrick Rose isn't humble anymore and he isn't just the hometown kid anymore either. As well as being an example of sports-talk radio journalism, this article also shows the media's fascination with building people up in anticipation of eventually tearing them down. Look no further than Robert Griffin to see how the media goes about building a person up through pushing a false ideal of perfection on that person only to tear the person down when it turns out he isn't perfect and has flaws. But hey, it's about getting attention and Dan Bernstein got attention for this article. Big win for him.

Complaining while not playing is a bad look for someone who has sold a phony reputation as a humble, team-oriented kid.

Derrick Rose doesn't want to rebuild. This is completely understandable. No professional athlete wants to rebuild. No professional athlete wants to be injured two years in a row and watch his team lose while he is on the bench. Everyone is happy when a team wins, everyone is unhappy when a team is losing. Winning covers up flaws a team has, while losing creates flaws where there may not actually be flaws or exacerbates current flaws.

Derrick Rose isn't not team-oriented because he doesn't want to rebuild. He's a human being because he doesn't want to rebuild. The Bulls don't want to sit around and wait for Rose to get healthy and plan around a player they aren't completely sure will come back as their franchise player. Derrick Rose knows the Bulls either (a) want to rebuild and possibly not have him be the centerpiece of the rebuilding plan or (b) rebuild in a way where the Bulls aren't a championship contender when Rose gets healthy. Not looking forward to a rebuild is being human and not in any way non-team-oriented or not humble.

According to a story in the New York Daily News, Rose is now unhappy that the Bulls will have to reconstruct their roster in an effort to win a championship, apparently thinking that such a move would be a waste of his precious time and efforts.

I wonder how Dan Bernstein would feel if he missed a month of work with a health issue, only to return to hear that his co-host and many of his best co-workers were fired? Would Dan Bernstein roll with the punches or be upset while he was out of the office his employer gutted the office? I really, really doubt Dan would just roll with the punches and be pleased. This also wouldn't make Dan Bernstein selfish for not liking that his favorite co-workers were fired. Of course putting himself in Rose's shoes takes too much work, so Bernstein points a finger at Rose instead.

‘Derrick is worried that the Bulls are going to lose what they have,’ said a league source. ‘He doesn’t want to go through rebuilding.’”

This statement may be true/untrue depending on if the league source is a Bulls employee or a guy who works for another NBA team who wants to create drama on the Bulls roster. It's not like that type of thing doesn't happen, especially concerning a report coming from a league source reported in a New York paper. You think the Knicks wouldn't want Derrick Rose or Joakim Noah on the roster in the near future? Who is this league source? 

To Dan Bernstein it doesn't matter because anonymous league sources and their quotes are a good way to have a hot sports take and change the narrative around Derrick Rose to one that says he is selfish and not humble.

What does he think they have, and where does he think it’s going? Most importantly, what does he not understand about the primary reason for the Bulls’ current plight?

He's a frustrated basketball player. Again, if Dan Bernstein came back from an extended break and found that his employer had fired many of his favorite co-workers or were planning on cleaning house at some point in the near future, do you think he would be happy about it? I really doubt it. He would be frustrated and upset.

It takes some nerve to call out his employers after they have paid him 30% of their salary cap to miss consecutive seasons.

It takes some nerve to call out a player for not being humble and then seeming to act as if Derrick Rose has gotten injured on purpose.

This is typical behavior from a player who has always done only what is in his personal best interest, everybody else be damned. He’ll take every last dollar, and enjoy all the team-supplied resources for medical consultations, surgeries, rehabilitation programs and various therapists, only to ignore their professional opinions just because he feels like it.

How dare a professional athlete take his own personal health into his own hands and not count on the medical staff on his team to do what is best for him instead of what is best for the team. We all know that the medical staff of a professional NBA or NFL team would NEVER do what is in the best interest of the team as opposed to what is best for the athlete. There are multiple stories of an NFL team's medical staff doing what is best for the team while risking the long-term health of the player. It's not crazy for Derrick Rose to take his own personal health into his own hands.

At this moment, John Paxson and Gar Forman are trying to win an NBA championship more in spite of Derrick Rose than because of him.

Of course they are. Derrick Rose keeps getting in the way of the Bulls winning an NBA title by intentionally getting injured.

It doesn’t help anything that Rose is not among the brightest bulbs, and that he still lives in an insular camp of cronies that is too often at odds with his team.

Again, Derrick Rose has a career to worry about and sometimes that career is at odds with what his employer wants for him. I guess Dan Bernstein wants Derrick Rose to live in an insular camp of cronies that does exactly what the Bulls tell him to do? That's the better option?

It was understandable for him to be shielded from Englewood gangs and other unsavory influences enough to get him a fair shot at a pro career, but enough already. He’s 25 years old, in his fifth NBA season, is worth a quarter-billion dollars and has a family of his own,

Which is why he has an obligation to his family and himself to not blindly trust the Bulls are going to do what is best for him and why he isn't completely pleased the Bulls are looking to rebuild. No player likes rebuilding, especially with the uncertainty of coming back from two straight seasons of suffering major injuries.

Reggie Rose is a clown, using the guise of brotherly love to aggrandize himself after a failed career as both player and coach that was marked by bizarre, immature behavior. Bulls officials have become increasingly frustrated by continued communication problems with Rose due to Reggie’s invasive influence, with one source telling WSCR “It’s like talking to a wall.”

Perhaps the best advice came from Charles Barkley last February, when he opined on TNT that instead of complaining about Bulls business, Reggie should “shut the hell up.”

Maybe Reggie Rose is a clown. Maybe he doesn't have Derrick's best interests at heart. Derrick Rose may be guilty of poor judgment in trusting his brother, but he isn't guilty of not being humble and being selfish for continuing to trust his brother.

Another problem is the presence of BJ Armstrong as part of Rose’s group as one of his agents. Armstrong’s personal bitterness toward Paxson and the Bulls runs long and deep: he’s still angry that he didn’t get the chance to replace Jerry Krause as GM and Paxson did, and the two former teammates are not on speaking terms. As long as he is allied with Rose there will be an undercurrent of conflict, with any comment or action subject to interpretation regarding ulterior motive.

How interesting that Dan Bernstein makes a comment saying any comment from Derrick Rose, B.J. Armstrong or John Paxson is subject to interpretation regarding ulterior motive while writing a column where Bernstein takes comments by an anonymous source in a New York paper and doesn't at all think about the source's ulterior motive. Bernstein feeds this undercurrent of conflict by choosing to interpret comments and Rose's actions in the way he does.

Derrick Rose needs to grow up, wise up, and seize control of his image and career before he and the bozos around him fritter away a mountain of good will, scattering his civic capital to the winds.

This is absolutely possible. Rose may need to trust different people, but his trust of his brother and his agent doesn't make him not humble.

He says he’s all about winning a championship, but then he carps about rebuilding when it appears his team is trying to do what it must to give him that very opportunity.

But Rose may not see rebuilding as the solution to winning a championship. Therein lies the problem. Rose knows the Bulls were close with him on the roster and healthy and doesn't want anything to change. It's human nature to feel this way.

And it’s certainly not humble, so we can stop with that. The quiet superstar is quiet not because he is naturally self-effacing, but because he is bad at talking. The local-kid-made-good storyline is over.

Okay then. Time to tear him down as quickly as possible.

He likes to let his game speak for him, but then refuses to play even when instructed to by doctors.

Let's not forget that Rose sat out the entire 2012-2013 season, which many felt was too long, and he still suffered another knee injury less than a month into the 2013-2014 season. Any athlete who has been injured knows he/she needs to come back only when that person feels comfortable having recovered from the injury. The idea Rose didn't play when "instructed to" by the Bulls' doctors doesn't seem like a terrible idea in retrospect considering Rose suffered another knee injury the following season.

He opts for cartilage repair that requires a longer-term recovery, and then lacks the basic understanding of how that changes the team’s title trajectory.

Right, because Rose got injured intentionally and then selfishly chooses a recovery process he thinks will bring him back to 100% health (which will benefit the Bulls greatly by the way).

As always, the Bulls are trying to take care of themselves while Derrick Rose tries to take care of Derrick Rose on the Bulls’ dime.

The Bulls can take care of themselves, but Derrick Rose isn't allowed to take care of himself. Got it.

Sadly, the two endeavors don’t always seem to be working toward the same ends.

Derrick Rose is concerned the Bulls are rebuilding because he thinks this negatively affects his goal to win an NBA title, while the Bulls are possibly thinking of rebuilding so they can win an NBA title. It seems the two sides just have different ways of reaching the same end. It's just Rose isn't humble anymore because that's the new narrative required to tear him down.