Will Leitch on Derrick Rose, fame

A good read from GQ on Derrick Rose and just how uncomfortable he is being the center of attention and the basketball superstar in Chicago who is the first to follow Jordan:

http://www.gq.com/sports/profiles/201205/derrick-rose-interview-gq-may-2012?currentPage=1%20target=new

 

Yeah, it's fucking awful that they made him do commercials as part of a $200 million endorsement deal. I can't believe the world forced that kind of attention on him.

Boohoo. Jordan said the same thing and so did Kobe. Turns out they were going out every night and fucking everything they could find.

Leitch thinks because he got access from the PR people, he "knows" Derrick Rose. What garbage.

 

Is there anyone left alive not writing profiles in the first-person?

 

Even Gary Smith and S.L. Price do it occasionally these days.

I began reading this piece before seeing LongTimeListener's post, and I have to say, I had the same trepidation before reading a word. Will Leitch's best work comes in essays. He doesn't seem to have the level of skepticism required of an interviewer. His long feature on Michael Vick was beautifully written but equally naive.

 

Everyone is adopting The Grantland style.

 

I live in Chicago, and this is basically the Derrick Rose everyone has known since high school. He's actually come out of his shell about 500 percent since back then. I recall his high school coach wouldn't let him talk to the media, which I think was a huge disservice to him. I haven't gotten the magazine yet, hopefully it'll come today, but heard Leitch on the radio this morning talking about this and he came off fine to me.

 

It takes some level of naivety to write, "Rose has gone from wide-eyed freshman at the University of Memphis to one of the most recognizable athletes in the world in the span of about four years." I mean, we know for sure that his SAT results were altered in some way. He reneged on his first commitment to college. He was a top-three recruit according to every scouting service. He was locked down and treated as a pro by his brothers from the time he was a sophomore in high school. "Wide-eyed freshman"? Give me a break.

And when I write that, I'm certainly not saying I would never see those words in a newspaper. But I don't think many top feature writers would use that kind of phrase to describe Derrick Rose. Will Leitch is a brilliant thinker, but he's out of his element. I'd rather read a Leitch essay with no interviewing at all about Rose.

 

Derrick Rose, and everyone who plays at that level, has essentially been a professional basketball player since age 12.

 

I think that this is something that a lot of the people out there who talk about NBA players being "thugs" and such don't get. Most of these guys, the way the system is structured in the 21st century, never lived a normal inner-city lifestyle. They've been on traveling AAU teams and essentially devoting their lives to high-level basketball since they were in middle school. There's no time for banging and drugging and the like. Not that you don't have the occasional J.R. Smith nincompoop slip through, but most of them are pretty sheltered from those influences.

Someone I know last year was droning on about how today's NBA players are "thugs." I challenged him to identify the "thugs" in the NBA Finals and even the conference finals. It was like the goddamned GQ All-Stars.

 

Excellent post.

 

I take issue with this only to identify the ongoing devaluation of the word 'brilliant.'

While I understand 'brilliant' used colloquially by a Brit to mean "very good," I wonder if we aren't abusing it here in the States, just as we do "awesome."

Voltaire? Brilliant. Mozart? Brilliant. Faulkner? Brilliant.

Will Leitch? Very good.

 

Awesome point.