Former league MVP and three-time All-Star Derrick Rose retired from the NBA Thursday, and current New York Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau offered strong words of appraisal on Rose’s career.
Knicks’ Tom Thibodeau applauds Derrick Rose on a great career
“The true measure of a man is how well he handles adversity – nobody did it better. Through it all – from the pressure of playing in his home city, to being the youngest MVP in NBA history, through injuries in three consecutive seasons – he stood tall, never relented, and always came back,” Thibodeau said about Rose via a statement released by the Knicks.
Thibodeau coached Rose for the majority of his career, including five years with the Chicago Bulls and another three with the Knicks. In 2011, Rose became the youngest player in NBA history to win the MVP award, a season in which Thibodeau led the Bulls to the top seed in the Eastern Conference and reached the Eastern Conference Finals.
Rose and Thibodeau would meet once again with the Minnesota Timberwolves, but that was a brief stint together that lasted slightly over one season. That stint, however, saw a brief resurgence from Rose after a few injured riddled seasons that plagued him post-MVP season.
He averaged 18 points per game while shooting 48.2% from the field — his highest since the 2009-10 season when he shot 48.9% — and played in 51 games with the Wolves in the 2018-19 season, but Thibodeau was fired after a 19-21 start and Minnesota would fail to reach the playoffs.
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Rose was a key member of the Knicks in 2021
By the time Rose returned to the Knicks via trade in 2021, he was a bench player at that stage of his career, but similar to the year he won MVP, it was Thibodeau’s first year coaching the team. He was hugely impactful for them during that season after he refined his game to being centered around perimeter scoring, finishing as a finalist for Sixth Man of The Year after averaging 14.9 points and shooting 41% from three-point range and helping the Knicks reach the fourth seed in the East.
His efforts were instrumental in getting the Knicks back in the playoffs, and he continued his great impact during the postseason. In Game 2 of the first round in the 2021 playoffs, Rose scored 27 points and led New York to their first postseason victory in nearly a decade.
Rose’s career will often be defined as “what could’ve been,” as he dealt with numerous severe injuries following his MVP season. However, Thibodeau is the guy who witnessed Rose’s career unfold from start to finish, and his words of appraisal hold the strongest weight when describing his career.
