Will Leitch's profile of Derrick Rose in GQ Magazine is worth reading for so many reasons. There's Rose's quip on page 4 about knowing, but not appreciating, President Barack Obama when he was in high school and Obama was merely an Illinois senator. There's Rose's thoughts on LeBron James' decision to leave his hometown, why he is so good at reading situations and his explanation for why he blew off a media scrum early in the season.
Derrick Rose Explains Why He Hates All The Attention He Gets
But the most significant part of the piece was the part of Rose we so often hear about, but never directly from him. Why, exactly, is he seemingly uncomfortable with the attention he receives?
“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t take anything for granted,” he says. “But it seems like the better I play, the more attention I get. And I can’t get away from it. You play great, you get attention. But I hate attention. It is weird. I’m in a bind. The more you win, the more they come.”
Later, Rose complains about how he can’t go out without being mobbed and how he almost never has any time where he’s completely alone. It’s as open as Rose has ever been about himself, which makes the piece worth reading.
It also makes you think for a second. Obviously, most of us aren’t as introverted as Rose is, but there is clearly a trade-off to being famous. Could any of us be happy if our only public activities were with people we didn’t know? Could we function if we were smothered by other people at every hour of the day?
Maybe the answer is yes, but clearly, it’s not as glamorous to every famous person as we may think.
See More:
