Reggie Rose and his brothers shielded Derrick because they did not want him to end up like fellow Chicago prospect Ronnie Fields.
When Brenda Rose realized that her son Derrick was an exceptional basketball player, she turned to her three other sons—Dwyane, Reggie, and Alan—to ensure that their youngest sibling would tread the right path to hoops superstardom.
Mrs. Rose had seen so many Chicago basketball kids turn from prodigies into busts after making bad decisions. She didn’t want to waste Derrick’s gift. When D-Rose started to gain notoriety at Simeon High, his brothers built a wall around him and protected him from the outside world.
Reggie, who later ended up becoming Derrick’s manager, said they had to protect their youngest brother from gangs, drug dealers, bad influences, and agents. According to Reggie, the latter were the worst.
“People were just beginning to really look at how they could make money off Derrick,” he said. “If we hadn’t kept those people away, he could have ended up like Ronnie Fields.”
Fields did not have a support system
Fields was a Chicago top-rated prospect who played for Farragut Academy alongside Kevin Garnett. Many said the 6’3″ guard was a sure-fire NBA star, but two days short of his 19th birthday, he figured in a car accident that left him with serious injuries that cost him his NBA dream. The accident happened after Fields was out with his teammates.
Reggie believes that if Fields had only had a good support system back then, he wouldn’t have the wrong people around him, and he wouldn’t have made one bad decision after another. Perhaps if not for those, he wouldn’t have been on the road that fateful night.
Well, D-Rose’s brothers did a good job of shielding him from the bad people. He went to Memphis and became the No.1 overall pick of the 2007 NBA Draft by his hometown Chicago Bulls.
Derrick stood by Reggie
But before D-Rose became a Bull, the Chicago franchise thought twice about picking him because of Reggie’s alleged criminal history. When the Bulls started to have doubts, Derrick told the team not to draft him if they couldn’t accept his brother.
“He might not be the No. 1 pick because of some mistakes I made in my life,” said Reggie in a 2019 documentary. “But Derrick told the Chicago Bulls, if you can’t accept my brother, don’t pick me. I remember that. He wouldn’t eat. But I could see he was hurt. He tears up some because I thought he wanted to be a number one pick, and I teared up too cuz I thought I messed it up for him.”
The Bulls ultimately picked Rose, and after winning Rookie of the Year in 2009, he became the youngest player in NBA history to win the MVP in 2011. Injuries cut short Derrick’s prime, but there was no doubt that his brothers did their job and led him to the right path.