Derrick Rose on Fame: ‘It’s Just Weird. I’m Never Alone. Ever’

Derrick Rose is the cover subject for the May issue of GQ, and the Chicago Bulls’ superstar guard opens up about what it’s like to deal with enormous, unrelenting fame, among other things: “Derrick Rose, the reigning NBA MVP, lives on the eighty-fourth floor of the Trump building in Chicago, one of the tallest buildings in the country, right up near the roof, with wall-length windows overlooking the city he rules, the only city he has ever known. The view is disorienting and all-encompassing, sort of like he’s living on an observation deck of the Willis Tower, which happens to be right over there, one of the only points above us in the mess of verticals downtown. Rose also has a home in Northbrook, by the Bulls’ training complex, but he says he has that place mostly for convenience, so he doesn’t have to drive back into the city after practice. Someday he’d like to have a house, ‘my real house,’ where he’ll ‘have kids and just live in my spot.’ But he can’t do that now, not even close. This condo, the one he just moved into about a month ago—it is almost entirely unfurnished; two of his bedrooms have no sheets on the beds and are filled with stacks of unopened boxes—this is his escape for now. Eighty-four stories up in the sky, secured away. ‘I like living here,’ he says. ‘They just try to make you comfortable. The people here, they are mostly from out of town; they don’t know who I am. That’s why I picked this place.’ (It’s easy to understand why one would enjoy working in this building, too. When Rose orders two bottled waters for us during our chat, he hands the bellhop two $50 bills.) Presidents talk about how the White House begins to feel like a prison. Rose speaks the same way about the town that adores him. ‘It gets on my nerves that I just can’t go out,’ he says. ‘It’s just boundaries now. People are like, ‘You can’t go here, you can’t go there, you got to let that person know where you’re going.’ It’s just weird. I’m never alone. Ever.'”