Derrick Rose

I have been waiting on this post for a looooooong time (it was one of my earliest post ideas) and finally, tonight's the night most deserving of a post about one of my Top 3 favourite NBA players, Derrick Rose. I follow the Chicago Bulls (my second favourite team) on Twitter and before the game tonight, the Bulls tweeted this:

Luckily for the people of Haiti, Derrick Rose went off for 32 points to go along with five assists, three rebounds, three steals and only one turnover. Rose will be contributing a sizeable donation of $32,000 to the relief efforts on the island.

Tonight was also "Hope for Haiti Now", an international tele-a-thon hosted by Wycleaf Jean & George Clooney to raise money to help rebuild Haiti, and featured numerous performances simulcast from London, New York City and Los Angeles.

Just for good measure, two of Rose's 32 came from this thundering dunk, which was Friday's "Dunk of the Night".

I met Rose while in Chi-city this past October and I have to say, he was as friendly as I could have expected a pro athlete to be (or at least one that I would wait in line for 3 hours to see - true story by the way). Each person had about 10 seconds to say their whatevers to him and get a picture with the reigning Rookie of the Year. Instead of the 10 year-old Chicago boys in front of me - it was their third time seeing Rose - and the nice family from Kentucky behind us, who both told Rose he was their favourite player, I got creative. I told him how great it was watching him block Rondo in the most pivotal moment of last year's Bulls-Celtics epic playoff series. I'm sorry if I'm a little too emotion about this, but I have to say, it was damn cool. It was the first time I'd ever waited in line to meet someone I really wanted to meet; especially someone on a team I really like; and especially in that team's city.

In all reality, I'm just thankful that Rose decided to go off for 32 - which ties his second-highest mark of the season - and won a big game not only for his team but for the people of Haiti as well.

P.S. for those who were wondering, $32,000 is only 6/10ths of a single percent of his $5.1 million salary.