Some people forget Derrick Rose wasn’t Memphis’ best player through the Tigers’ 2007-08 regular season. The future NBA superstar played second fiddle to Chris Douglas-Roberts, the team’s leading scorer and a first-team All-American. Rose “settled” for third-team honors.
Quiet and introverted, an 18-year-old Rose joined a program returning four starters and coming off back-to-back Elite Eight appearances. Early on, he mostly just tried to fit in. He posted a single-digit scoring line in three of his first eight games. He did the same in three of the Tigers’ final four games before the 2008 NCAA Tournament. As crazy as it sounds in hindsight, there was a time when some Memphis fans called into local radio stations to ask if Andre Allen might be a better option at point guard.
And then he took off.
As the story was once told to me, the Memphis coaching staff eventually made it clear to Rose before the postseason that the Conference USA schedule the Tigers rolled through was over. It was time to stop deferring to his older teammates. They more or less convinced Rose the team would only go as far in the NCAA Tournament as he took them and pleaded with him to take things to another level.
What followed was one of the greatest individual runs in NCAA Tournament history.
Rose was a force while overwhelming big brands with elite point guards. He took down Michigan State (Drew Neitzel) in the Sweet 16, then Texas (D.J. Augustin) in the Elite Eight, followed by UCLA (Darren Collison and Russell Westbrook) in the Final Four.
In the days leading up to the Tigers’ first Final Four appearance since 1985, I called then-UCLA coach Ben Howland, who happened to be tearing through Memphis tape in his office at the time. He was blown away by a play he’d just watched where Rose grabbed a rebound off the rim and beat everybody down the court for a layup.
“He’s great,” Howland said.
Against UCLA, Rose finished with 25 points and nine rebounds. He attempted 12 free throws, just one fewer than the entire UCLA team, mostly because even UCLA’s future NBA guards could do nothing but foul to keep him out of the paint. Collison fouled out and Westbrook finished with four.
Memphis won the game, 78-63.
Afterward, then-Memphis coach John Calipari admitted that sometimes, he would watch Rose make plays and simply say, “oh my.”
In six NCAA Tournament games the one-and-done star averaged 20.8 points, 6.5 rebounds and 6.0 assists while shooting 51.8% from the field. If Kansas’ Mario Chalmers had not made a 3-pointer at the end of regulation in the championship game, Rose would have led Memphis to its first national championship.
“He was always an unbelievable teammate — maybe the best I’ve ever coached,” Calipari posted Thursday morning, shortly after Rose announced his retirement from the NBA after 16 seasons. “He was a coach’s dream, authentic and always trying to make it about other people.”
Derrick Rose’s 2008 NCAA Tournament run by the numbers
GamePointsFG PercentageReboundsAssistsFirst Round vs. TCU1553.8%46Second Round vs. Mississippi State1854.5%66Sweet 16 vs. Michigan State2362.5%59Elite Eight vs. Texas2160.0%54Final Four vs. UCLA2569.2%95Championship vs. Kansas1747.2%59
If you watched that tournament run, it wasn’t difficult to imagine all of the things that came next for Rose. He was the No. 1 overall pick of the 2008 NBA Draft. He emerged as the face of his hometown Bulls, made three All-Star teams in his first four years in the league and was voted the youngest Most Valuable Player in NBA history — a title he still holds today. The potential for greatness was always undeniable and the greatness was there until injuries robbed him of his abilities.
Will Rose eventually make the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame? That’s hard to gauge.
On one hand, there were really only three Hall of Fame-worthy seasons in Rose’s professional career. That’s not ideal. But the Hall of Fame considers a player’s entire basketball career. And when you look at Rose’s through that prism, there’s at least a case to be made considering he’s a two-time state champion in Illinois who went 120-12 in high school, a national runner-up in college who went 38-2 at Memphis, a two-time FIBA World Cup gold medalist with USA Basketball, a three-time All-Star with the Bulls and — just to reiterate — the youngest Most Valuable Player in NBA history.
That at least gives Rose a shot — in part because literally every former NBA MVP who is eligible for the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame is in the Hall of Fame.
Will Rose make it?
Again, that’s hard to gauge. But regardless, he’ll always have those three weeks in 2008 when he overwhelmed everybody who stepped in front of him while producing one of the greatest individual runs March Madness has ever seen. It didn’t end the way he would have liked just as his professional career didn’t unfold the way he would have wanted. Life goes like that sometimes. But Derrick Martell Rose is forever a college basketball legend, just a lightning bolt of a phenom in baggy shorts who is largely responsible for what still is, and might forever be, the greatest season in Memphis basketball history.
