Derrick Rose’s No. 1 joins Chicago legends in the rafters as Bulls retire former MVP’s jersey 

Long before the banner climbed into the rafters, Derrick Rose was already feeling the weight of the moment.

By the time the Chicago Bulls finished off the Boston Celtics on Saturday night and prepared to retire his No. 1, the emotions had been building for days — even years. This was never just about basketball. This was about a kid from Chicago’s South Side coming full circle in the same building where he once carried a city’s hopes on his shoulders.

“I had someone or a journalist ask me, ‘Man, did you cry?’ I told him I cry every day,” Rose said. “And he asked about what. Being joyful, knowing where I grew up, knowing my coming back here, my being practical with knowing the economy, with me being there, and the neighborhoods. And you just know.

“That’s one of the reasons why I came back, is to curate things and to employ people.”

With the ceremony, Rose joined an exclusive group — Michael Jordan (23), Scottie Pippen (33), Jerry Sloan (4), and Bob Love (10) — as the only Bulls players to have their jerseys retired. But Saturday night felt less like an individual accolade and more like a shared victory between Rose and the city that raised him.

The arena leaned into the emotion. Rose wiped away tears as former teammates Taj Gibson, Luol Deng, and Joakim Noah took turns honoring him, followed by a heartfelt tribute from coach Tom Thibodeau. When Rose addressed his mother, his older brothers, his wife, and his three children, his voice cracked again. There were tears — but there were smiles too — as the banner was finally unveiled.

Rose had already seen it once. A day earlier, the Bulls shared a video of his first private look at the banner. In it, a wide-eyed Rose walks to center court, whispering, “wow, are you serious?” as he stares at the unfurled No. 1. He crouches, reaches out, and gently rubs the fabric before being joined by family and former teammates Joakim Noah, Taj Gibson, and Kirk Hinrich.

Noah summed it up simply in the clip, calling the moment “our championship moment.”

Saturday’s celebration felt personal down to the details. Black Rose jerseys waited on every seat. Video messages from Jordan and Pippen played on the big screen. And in a signature Rose touch, bouquets from Rose’s Flower Shop were left in both locker rooms before tip-off.

“He instilled that heart, he instilled that trust in us and that made us come out and fight for you every single night,” Gibson told the crowd.

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Raised in Chicago.
Overcame adversity.
Starred for his city.
Eternally remembered.

Derrick Rose’s jersey heads to the Bulls rafters pic.twitter.com/YskUi72PIK

— NBA (@NBA) January 25, 2026

Thibodeau, meanwhile, praised not just Rose’s brilliance but his character.

“The next stop, in my opinion, is the Hall of Fame and there is no doubt about that,” he said.

The jersey retirement was another chapter in a story the Bulls began honoring earlier this year. On January 4, 2025, Chicago paid tribute to Rose during a game against New York, a symbolic nod to the numbers he wore with the Bulls, Knicks, and Simeon Career Academy — and the night the franchise officially announced plans to retire his jersey.

Drafted No. 1 overall in 2008, Rose’s rise was meteoric: Rookie of the Year, All-Star, then NBA MVP by age 22 — still the youngest ever to win the award. The devastating ACL injury in the 2012 playoffs changed everything, forcing him to miss nearly two seasons and pushing him to question whether he would continue playing at all.

He finished his career with averages of 17.4 points and 5.2 assists across 723 games, scoring 21 points per game before the injury and 15.1 afterward. But Rose has never framed his career around loss.

At 37, his focus has shifted well beyond the court — toward family, business ventures like his flower shop, and community work, including promoting chess among at-risk youth in Chicago. Basketball, at least in a professional sense, is no longer the destination.

“Everybody thinks the the path or the motif was, ‘All right, after you get done, you gotta go back and be around basketball,’” Rose said. “I didn’t want that. I wanted to curate things or be in lanes that nobody was in. Coming from Chicago, when you tend to enter lanes that people are in, you step on toes and certain things can happen.

“So with me having that in mind, I wanted curate things so that I don’t have to worry about any competition.”

On a cold Chicago night, fans still showed up, filling the United Center to witness a moment years in the making — something Rose didn’t take for granted.

“All this, the moment, I’m still trying to take in, I’m still trying to process in real time,” he said. “And yeah, and just feeling grateful, you know what I mean? Like knowing the weather conditions out there, knowing that it’s a Chicago thing to even show up here, to fight through that and still go to an event. It’s huge, so it’s something that I’m grateful for.”

In the rafters now hangs a simple No. 1 — a reminder that greatness doesn’t always follow a straight line, and that for Derrick Rose, the loudest legacy has always been his connection to home.

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