I don’t know.
I’m not sure if it was coincidence that bridged the two decades of time together; that it being the knotted tie of Tupac Shakur’s poem “The Rose That Grew From The Concrete” and Derrick Rose’s injury.
or some magical, unfortunate fate, some kind of hapless destiny.
Derrick Rose, born October 4, 1988, and former MVP of the Chicago Bulls, has become a nomad, moving from team to team these past few NBA seasons. From the Bulls to the Knicks to the Cavs to a very short stint with the Jazz to finally now the Wolves, all within a span of three years, Rose was once, along with Kevin Durant and Brandon Roy, among others, seen as the future of the NBA when the decade of the 2010 cracked open. His ascension to the top of the staircase of the Association’s ranks, just like his game, was almost superhuman; swift with the foot speed of The Flash but the booming, loud stomps of the Hulk, headstrong, determined, and almost derivative with the gameplan like Gon of HunterXHunter, yet contorting and complex on his way to the basket, slippery like Naruto’s Orochimaru.
His ceiling felt like it was ever rising.
until that day.
April 28th, 2012. The day Derrick Rose tore his ACL. Ever since that day, his fall from greatness felt more like a plummet into abyss with which we’d never see the Derrick Rose that captivated America’s attention and had taken everyone’s hearts as the whole of next season he sat out and would subsequently be hit with a litany of injuries that almost assuredly made it seem he would never get back on his feet. Especially to where he had last seen him.
The youngest MVP of all time and the Chicago-bred Derrick Rose is not unlike Hugh Glass, the main protagonist of the incredible 2015 Golden Globe and Academy Award winning film, The Revenant.
The plot shadows Hugh Glass, a frontiersman who was the guide on a fur trading expedition in the 1820s but after being mauled in a bear attack, he is left for dead by the members of his own hunting party when three of those members, including his own son, who was murdered by one of the three that was left with him, John Fitzgerald. Glass, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, unable to speak after having his throat slashed by the bear and paralyzed after his back is shredded by the bear, is only able to witness this with bloodshot eyes; this memory is seared into his mind, inspiriting and almost reviving him as he was inflamed with vengeance, powering him to trek through the wintry terrain and find the man who killed his son.
The parallels between Glass and Rose are similar, both were essentially giving up on by people that saw them leading their respective groups to the light at the end of the tunnel, Rose leading the Bulls to a championship and Glass leading the fur trading group to a fruitful transaction that would see them all prosper.
Both having to resurrect themselves by adapting to unjust circumstances with a scrupulous attention to detail and meticulous, tedious work habits.
In times where most would just give in to conditions that seemed out of their power, these two recaptured their essence when it seemed nature had stripped them of it.
how?
Derrick Rose, after being counted down and out by a plethora of individuals, has had a resurgent season as the sixth man of the Minnesota Timberwolves this season. Adapting to the game of today, we’ve seen Derrick Rose shoot the three point shot exponentially (hyperbolic, but you get the drift) more efficient than the ever before, which has opened up his trademark, violent driving game with more lanes to the rim. Shooting 48% from three has made it for defenders to play him tighter than before. Not to mention how wide the court for players has become and we see that Derrick Rose is having his most efficient season to date.
To have gone through what he has gone through at only the age of 30, as decent of a human as he is outside of basketball, has shown that nature plays favorites with no one.
Glass, from having to teach himself to walk again to essentially cauterizing his neck as he couldn’t eat or drink through it without coughing blood and his wound reopening to having to take shelter from a storm inside the belly of a horse, has gone through hell and back to see through that he avenges the death of his son. He has undergone hallucinations and dreams to wake in the nightmare that was his reality.
how does this all correlate? how does this come back full circle to Tupac’s poem?
As quoted in Shakur’s resonating poem,
“You see, you wouldn’t ask why the rose that grew from the concrete had damaged petals.
On the contrary, we would all celebrate its tenacity.
We would all love its will to reach the sun.
Well, we are the roses. This is the concrete. These are my damaged petals. Don’t ask me why… ask me how.”
You see, the two characters rose from what nature had seemingly buried them in: despair, unforgiving circumstances, not impartial to the tenuous of will and mind. Essentially, solidly blocking them from what success or bliss they were chasing.
Almost like concrete
Even with both Rose’s injury past, perpetuating him as a glass figure and Glass experiencing what most would consider the end on multiple fronts, molding a thorny edge within him, their resolve and hardened wills to keep rising and finding slivers of cracks to reach the sun is inspiring in and of itself.
Besides, though he alludes to his roots rather than his career struggles, Rose acknowledges this himself.
youngwhipsnap 
