CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose is the NBA's MVP, becoming the youngest player in league history to win the award, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press.
The person spoke Monday night on the condition of
anonymity because a formal announcement has not been made. That could come
Tuesday, with a formal presentation before Game 2 of the Eastern Conference
semifinals.
The news is hardly a surprise.
Rose is the second Bulls player to win the MVP but
has a ways to go before he catches Michael Jordan, who won five — but he sure
is off to a good start. In his third year, the dynamic point guard led the
Bulls to their best season since the Jordan-Scottie Pippen championship era.
"If I get it? It'll be nice, unbelievable, a
goal that in the beginning in the year I said I wanted to achieve," Rose
said recently when asked what the award would mean to him. "It would be
huge, not only for me, but for the city."
He ended the two-year MVP reign of LeBron James,
who spurned the Bulls and bolted from Cleveland to form a superstar triumvirate
with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami. The 22-year-old Rose also supplanted
Wes Unseld as the youngest MVP. He was 23 was the rookie of the year and MVP
with Baltimore Bullets for the 1968-69 season.
A product of Chicago's South Side, Rose continued
his impressive rise this season.
He established himself as one of the top players in
the league after going from Rookie of the Year to an All-Star in his first two
seasons with one of the best all-around performances by a point guard.
He averaged 25 points and 7.7 assists while leading
Chicago into championship contention.
For all the groaning over the Bulls missing out on
James, Wade and Bosh in free agency, they did quite well for themselves anyway.
Looking for more after back-to-back 41-win seasons
and first-round playoff exits, they fired coach Vinny Del Negro and replaced
him with Tom Thibodeau. Then, they landed Carlos Boozer and supporting players
like Kyle Korver, giving the Bulls the inside scoring presence they were
lacking and one of the deepest rotations.
It all added up to this — a 62-20 record and homecourt
advantage throughout the playoffs. They advanced past the first round for just
the second time since the championship era, and the biggest reason for all
that, of course, was Rose.
He showed up to training camp openly wondering why
he couldn't be MVP. Then, he backed it up.
He ranked seventh in scoring and 10th in assists,
making him the only player this season in the top 10 in both categories. The
only other Bulls player to do that was Jordan in 1988-89, when he led the
league in scoring (32.5 points) and finished 10th in assists.
Throw in a 4.1 rebounding average, and Rose joins
another elite group. He's the seventh player in league history to average at
least 25 points, 7.5 assists and 4.0 rebounds, along with Jordan, Oscar
Robertson, Jerry West, Larry Bird, Wade and James, according to the Elias
Sports Bureau.
In the postseason, he's been just as impressive.
He scored 39 and 36 points in the first two playoff
games against Indiana. Then he shook off two sub-par performances not to
mention a sprained left ankle to score 25 points in Game 5 as the top-seeded
Bulls closed out what had been a tight first-round series with a 116-89
victory.
They stumbled in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference
semifinals against Atlanta, losing 103-95. Rose scored 24 points, but he hit
just 11 of 27 shots and did not attempt a free throw. He also limped off the
court after twisting his left ankle in the closing seconds, sending a chill
through Chicago, but he said he expects to be ready for Game 2 on Wednesday.
Rose has been a star in Chicago since high school.
He helped Simeon Career Academy become the first Chicago Public League team to
win back-to-back Illinois state championships, then led the University of
Memphis to the NCAA championship game in his lone college season before the
Bulls drafted him with the No. 1 pick in 2008.
Since then, he's been everything Chicago imagined.
He's added new wrinkles to his game every season,
expanding the range on his jumper to go with those explosive drives to the
basket. He went from shooting 22.2 percent and 26.7 percent on 3-pointers his
first two years to a more respectable 33.2 percent this season, and his scoring
average again climbed about four points after going from 16.8 to 20.8 his first
two years.
No surprise there.
He was a fixture at the team's practice facility in
the offseason when he wasn't getting ready for the world championships, and
when he was on the road, he was constantly checking in, asking about his
teammates and what he should be doing.
That struck Thibodeau, the long time NBA assistant
who finally got a shot to be head coach after helping Boston win a championship
and get back to the NBA finals. So did the experience Rose gained with the
national team, particularly playing alongside Chauncey Billups.
Now, the kid from the South Side who led his
hometown team back to prominence can call himself MVP.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
