Albany

Derrick Rose says people called him washed for years while he was quietly rebuilding his entire game after multiple surgeries, and says he had to come to terms with the fact that he was never going to be the same player again in order to fully heal “Mentally, you’re having to deal with, like, ‘I’m never gonna be the same.’ That’s rough. Like, ‘I’m never gonna be the same, bro.’ Can I play through this pain? Because every day, it’s not going to be pain-free when you’re dealing with an injury. Can you play through the pain?” “After my ACL injury, all the way into my 15th year, I played through some type of pain for all those years to get to where I was at, to get to where I am right now. I wasn’t letting nobody pressure me to come back early. Something don’t feel right, I’m telling them. When I run, when I decelerate, I ain’t decelerating right. They’re like, ‘What do you mean?’” “Something about when I decelerate, bro, it’s not right. They’re like, ‘No, we think you can play.’ No, bro. Something about what’s going on. I took two more months off.” “The moment that I did come back too early, two flaps in the back opened up, and I had to get them taken out or halfway removed. So I’m not bone-on-bone in either knee, but I had to get two flaps removed back-to-back.” “That’s like four or five surgeries within three or four years. So I’m like, bro, after the surgeries, I’ve got to figure out myself. I ain’t listening to nobody. You’re trying to figure out your rhythm, bro. And I did that for like four or five years while people were telling me that my game wasn’t it, that I wasn’t the same player.” “My numbers were still good NBA numbers, but they were comparing me to my MVP year and saying I was trash. But I’m telling them the whole time, ‘Man, I’m gonna get to a place where I’m gonna put this together.’ I said that the whole time: ‘I’m gonna put it together.’” “And me putting it together at the end was me shooting 40% from three for numerous years, three or four years. And for me, that’s huge because coming in labeled not a shooter, and to go three or four years shooting over 40, it showed that I adapted.”