LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Derrick Rose are all teammates with the Cavaliers.
They could have joined forces sooner.
LeBron and Wade considered the Bulls in 2010 free agency before choosing the Heat, who also signed Chris Bosh. Then Chicago’s big-name player, Rose said he refused to recruit those stars, though.
Now, Rose is telling a different tale.
Dave McMenamin of ESPN:“Oh yeah, yeah, I tried,” Rose said after shootaround Tuesday. “People always said that I didn’t recruit. I tried to recruit. I put out the video, but, it wasn’t for me to say that. I felt like it was for the organization to say that.”
Rose said he filmed a video in which he recruited the big three to join him on a Bulls team that had a young core of Luol Deng, Taj Gibson and Joakim Noah already.
When asked why this revelation was just coming to light now, Rose replied, “I just wanted to see who had my back,” presumably referring to members of the Bulls front office that could have corrected the perception that Rose was hands-off by telling the media about the video that was filmed.
Rose said he is unaware if the video was ever viewed by James, Wade and Bosh.
"(The Bulls) didn’t say anything about it,” Rose said. “They sent it, I don’t know if they really actually looked at it or played the video, but, I made the video, but at the time it really wasn’t for me to say that.”
Rose clearly didn’t want to alienate his Chicago teammates by openly recruiting outside free agents, a noble sentiment. The Bulls would have had to shed salary to clear room for two max free agents, let alone three.
But what did Rose expect the narrative to be when he said things like “as far as recruiting, I never did and never will”?
Bulls management had similar incentives to show loyalty to incumbent players. Rose probably would have been ticked if someone from the front office discussed the video publicly.
Rose chose to hide his recruiting efforts, which might have improved team chemistry but also painted him a star uneager to share the spotlight. It’s nice that he set the record straight now, but after he extracted all the positives of his misleading statements, there’s no reason to feel bad he also dealt with some negative perception.
