The Chicago Bulls may be doing right by their favorite son.
Chicago announced on Friday that they will be honoring their former MVP guard Derrick Rose, who announced his retirement last month, with an upcoming “Derrick Rose Night” during a game in January.
January 4, 2025: Derrick Rose Night
Join us to celebrate one of our own pic.twitter.com/M5NGpFr8OX
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) October 11, 2024
Bulls writer KC Johnson reports that the team is also still discussing the possibility of retiring Rose’s No. 1 jersey. Johnson notes that nobody has worn No. 1 in Chicago since Rose, so the number is unofficially retired. But when it comes to an official retirement of the No. 1 jersey in honor of Rose, that has not been done yet.
For Rose, a Chicago native who was the Bulls’ No. 1 overall pick in 2008 and played for the team from 2008-16, there is a very strong argument in favor of the honor. Rose won an MVP for the Bulls in 2011 (only the second player in franchise history to do so along with Michael Jordan) and was easily their most consequential player of the 21st century. But detractors will point out the fact that Rose’s peak was extremely brief thanks to injuries and that the Bulls never won anything during the Rose era (only making one conference finals appearance in 2011).
As it stands right now, the Bulls have only retired four of their players’ jerseys ever (Jerry Sloan’s No. 4, Bob Love’s No. 10, Michael Jordan’s No. 23, and Scottie Pippen’s No. 33). Bill Russell’s No. 6 jersey has also gotten retired leaguewide, and Phil Jackson, Jerry Krause, and Red Kerr were the recipients of symbolic jersey retirements by the Bulls.
While Rose, now 36, was never quite able to reach his true potential in the NBA, he is still very much beloved in Chicago, so a formal jersey retirement ceremony for him would certainly be a crowd-pleaser.
