The Air Up There

Derrick Rose made a dramatic leap from inner-city baller to the NBA. His story starts in Englewood, one of Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods, where, as an athletic prodigy, he was shielded from harm

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As soon as he could, he moved his mother out of the neighborhood and into a house in Homewood, just as the violence began to heat up again. "Three blocks away from my house they shot a boy in the face," he says. "One of my brothers was nearby while the shooting was going on." (Some of Rose's extended family still live in the neighborhood.)

On October 28th, the now six-foot-three point guard will make his professional debut against the Milwaukee Bucks. Englewood will no doubt be tuned in. But that's as close as Derrick Rose will get for now. Though he'd like to visit family and friends, for the time being, Rose says he can't go anywhere near. "It's crazy now," he says. "Everyone says don't stop there, not even for ten minutes, until everything has cooled down." Perhaps most telling, the Bulls declined a request to photograph Rose near his childhood home.

Photograph: Charles Cherney/Chicago Tribune photo

This article appears in the November 2008 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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