Bears Blitz

Published by Yaron Weitzman on November 4, 2016
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears

Andre Hamlin was relaxing in the living room of his Chicago home when he noticed the news alert trickle across the screen of his cell phone.

Hamlin, 42, had grown up in the poor, crime-riddled South Side neighborhood of Englewood, Illinois. He, like so many other Englewood kids, had spent time in a gang. But he turned his life around as an adult, beginning community outreach and taking a job as an assistant coach at his alma mater, Simeon Career Academy.

There, he met the younger brother of an old friend, a teenager with an explosive first step and killer crossover named Derrick Rose. The two grew close, and today Andre serves as a member of Rose’s security team. He’s spent portions of the past decade at Rose’s side, still living in the city where he and Rose were raised.

Like so many of his neighbors, Hamlin was proud that the heart and soul and face of the hometown Bulls was one of Englewood‘s own.

“It meant everything,” Hamlin said this week in a phone interview. “He was proof that the way people talk about Englewood, that it’s all crime and gangs, isn’t the case, and that he was doing that for our team, it was special.”

Which is why that trade report scrolling across his phone on the afternoon of June 22 came as such a blow.

The Chicago Bulls had sent Rose to the New York Knicks in exchange for Robin Lopez and spare parts. Hamlin turned on NBA TV to confirm, he looked over at his eight-year-old son—who was crying—and he thought about all the Thanksgiving turkeys Rose had handed out in Englewood during years past and all the school supplies he had purchased for local kids.

The marriage between Rose and the Bulls, once considered happy, was ending in divorce. The dream that so many Chicago natives once had—of the hometown hero leading the Bulls to their first post-Michael Jordan title—was no more.

“It crushed me,” Hamlin said. “I just broke down.”

Save for the eight or so months he spent on the campus of the University of Memphis, Rose had never lived in any other city. 

On Friday, with the Knicks traveling to Chicago, Hamlin and the rest of the city will see Rose in different colors and even a different number.

“I’ve been getting texts all week from friends saying they hope he goes for 50 on the Bulls,” Hamlin said. He added it’s not unusual to see Knicks gear around Englewood these days, and that Rose purchased 60 tickets to give to friends and family for Friday’s game.

Rose, so far, has passed on disparaging his former team in the lead-up to the reunion.

“I haven’t been thinking about it, man,” he told reporters Tuesday in Detroit, according to the New York Post. “Only when probably it’s game day, I’ll think about it. There’s no bad blood there either. I understand this is a business. They made a business decision. On my end, I just got to stay prepared.”

Many fans, though, have had no qualms attacking the Bulls.

“I was furious at the team’s management after the trade,” said Joel Hernandez, a 26-year-old Chicago native whose well-known Derrick Rose fandom prompted other Bulls fans to recommend him to Bleacher Report (for example, he apparently owns nearly every version of Rose’s signature Adidas sneaker). 

“He was a great player, on his way back from injury and from the city,” he added. “It just felt right having him as our guy.”

Hamlin, for his part, is more sad than angry about the breakup. He wishes it could have worked out for Rose in Chicago but acknowledged a change was good for all parties involved.

“I just felt like it was time for a new chapter for him. Everyone is used to him here.”

Like Hamlin, Reginald Brock, the athletics director at Simeon and also an Englewood native, has no issue with the Bulls.

“That honeymoon period was kind of over,” Brock said. “He carried the weight of the city on his shoulders, but as the years went on a lot of irresponsible things were said and written about him.”

Brock thinks it started with the injuries and missed games. That, he said, led to a budding tension between Rose and some Bulls fans and the Chicago media. 

“It felt like a divorce,” Brock said. “He had grown into the face of the franchise and was just snatched from us.”

The trade triggered similar emotions in Bulls fans outside Englewood as well. Take Cristian Rosas, a 19-year-old from Cicero, a suburb 13 miles north of where Rose was born. Rosas didn’t know Rose as a kid. He wasn’t even a Bulls fans prior to Rose’s MVP year in 2011. But since then, he’s morphed into a Bulls and Rose fanatic.

In a phone interview, Rosas said he’s more excited about Rose’s return to Chicago than he was for the Cubs’ World Series run. He also works at the Home Run Inn on 31st Street, a pizza shop that Rose used to visit on Sunday mornings. He’d purchase a couple of pepperoni slices and eat them outside in his white Maserati. It’s an anecdote that Rosas is excited to share.

Rosas said he was working a shift at the Home Run Inn when he learned about the trade. He remembered discussing it with a security guard who was happy that the Bulls were finally cutting bait with Rose. But Rosas felt differently.

“Me and my friends, we thought he belonged here in Chicago,” he said. “We just never expected him to leave.” 

Rosas said he’s excited to watch Friday night’s game, but conceded he’s not quite sure how he’ll react. Watching Rose put on a Knicks uniform was strange enough: Seeing him drive at and shoot over his former team is an experience he’s not quite ready for.

“It’s going to be really strange,“ he said. “I guess I’m going to have to root for him and the Bulls.“

All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.

Yaron Weitzman covers the Knicks, and other things, for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @YaronWeitzman. 

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